Memoir Basics 1: What's in a memoir?

Story themes

As we said right at the start of the lesson, a memoir isn’t just about talking about you. It’s using an interesting story about a personal situation to talk about big themes, hoping that your readers learn from it or are inspired by it.

A story theme will cover the whole book, which makes them tricky to talk about at a snippet level, but you can often get a sense of them from the opener. 

Here’s an example. This is the opening paragraph to Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle. 

I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster. It was just after dark. A blustery March wind whipped the steam coming out of the manholes, and people hurried along the sidewalks with their collars turned up. I was stuck in traffic two blocks from the party where I was heading.

The Glass Castle(2005)
A lady looking in a dumpster

As far as openers go, it’s definitely an attention grabber! 

It fills the mind with questions: 

  • Why is the mother dumpster diving? Is she poor? Homeless? Another reason?
  • Why are the mother’s and daughter’s lifestyles so very different? What got them to this point?
  • The daughter doesn't sound like she’s shocked, or ready to leap out of the taxi to help her mother. What’s their relationship?

Those questions are not themes, but the answers behind them will probably cover themes like broken family relationships, poverty, loss, and overcoming hardship. If that interests you, you’ll probably continue reading the story.

Memoirs often look at one or more of these topics:

  • Accepting change
  • Adjusting to a new life
  • Coming of age
  • Compassion
  • Dealing with loss
  • Determination
  • Discrimination
  • Friendship
  • Greed
  • Hard work
  • Hope
  • Leadership
  • Making tough choices
  • Overcoming adversity
  • Parenthood
  • Poverty
  • Self esteem
  • Survival
  • War
  • Wealth

Let’s look at some other memoir openers. What questions come to your mind when you read them? What themes do you think the answers to those questions will cover?

I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car.

It happened on a Sunday. I know it was on a Sunday because we were coming home from church, and every Sunday in my childhood meant church. We never missed church. My mother was—and still is—a deeply religious woman. Very Christian. Like indigenous peoples around the world, black South Africans adopted the religion of our colonizers. By “adopt” I mean it was forced on us.

It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: (YA edition)(2016)
From reading this opener, what themes do you think this story will have? Use the guide list to help.

We think this story could be about:

  • Determination
  • Discrimination
  • Overcoming adversity
  • Poverty
  • Survival

This may sound funny but somewhere in the back of my mind I thought the world would stop for my first day of JH. The day proved me wrong and I’ve grown to realize that nothing will be quite as I dreamed them up.

My teachers are one of my biggest disappointments. In this crazy dream world of mine my teachers were cool and calm and bright and welcoming.

Diary of Latoya Hunter: My First Year in Junior High(1992)
From reading this opener, what themes do you think this story will have? Use the theme guide list to help.

We think this story could be about:

  • Accepting change
  • Adjusting to a new life
  • Coming of age

Next, let’s look at how you could write your own opener.

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