Whew. My MFA thesis is done. Nearly 42 pages if you count the annotated bibliography. When I began the MFA and created my reading list from 100 or so memoirs on the approved list from Wilkes, I had originally wanted to write about time in memoir; however, it just seemed a little vague to me. So, I thought about what else the memoirs I liked best had in common, and it really was quite obvious– the protaganists all survived, for the most part, hellish childhoods.
In my paper, I looked at the common characteristics of protagonists in five coming-of-age memoirs. I also looked at external factors: the conditions in which these children were raised, finding common bonds between parental presence, parenting style, household setting and education. In these comparisons, I shed light on how five contemporary writers, when they were just kids, not only made it through life, but made successful lives. Then, I showed how these traits are a central point to the memoir and discuss the ways these authors built this character and use it to propel a compelling story.
The memoirs I used included Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors, Tobias Wolff’s This Boys Life, Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle.
I am pretty happy with how the paper turned out. The next challenge? To create a 15-minute presentation to present the paper at the upcoming creative writing residency.
Papergirl: A Memoir by Donna Talarico 