Nostalgia

1
Nostalgia

• A wistful desire to return in thought or in fact
  to a former time in one's life, to one's home or
  homeland, or to one's family and friends a
  sentimental yearning for the happiness of a
  former place or time a nostalgia for his college
  days.
• - Dictionary.Com

2
Nostalgia Essays

• Uses the past to say something about the present.

3
What is Nostalgia?

• The state of being homesick homesickness
• A wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for
  return to or of some past period or irrecoverable
  condition also something that evokes
  nostalgia.
• - Merriam-Webster Dictionary

4
Longing

• The term nostalgia describes a longing for the
  past, often in idealized form. The word is made
  up of two roots (??st?? nostos "returning home",
  and ????? algos "pain"), to refer to "the pain a
  sick person feels because he wishes to return to
  his native home, and fears never to see it
  again".
• - Wickipedia

5
Nostalgia

• The current you is narrating the experience from
  the past.
• You are bringing a lesson to the audience.
• What that moment meant to you may have changed.

6
Nostalgia

• We are constantly filtering the past through the
  present.
• Similar technique to films such as A Christmas
  Story.
• Your roles change as you get older. For example,
  remembering a childhood experience as a parent.

7
Different Kind of Tone

• Nostalgia essays often have a bittersweet tone
  because there is longing for the past.
• They often bring doses of joy and pain.
• They can bring a new understanding for the writer
  as well as the reader.

8
Everyday Experiences

• While you could write a nostalgia essay about
  winning the lottery, its usually about everyday
  experiences.
• Its in the way that you tell it and what you
  notice that it gains its power.

9
Time Line

• You can be nostalgic for something that happened
  yesterday, but more often nostalgia essays take
  place more in the distant past.
• What distant means will depend on your age and
  place in life.

10
What Do You Long for?

• What experiences from your life would you like to
  relive?
• Is there anything that is happening right now
  that has accessed a memory from the past?

11
Triangle

• Personal Essay
• Creative Non-Fiction
• Opinion Writing

12
Magazine

• A magazine of nostalgic stories and photos.
• Relive the memories of yesterday through photos
  and short personal accounts in an entertaining
  monthly magazine. A nostalgic look back at life
  before the 1970s.
• Stories and photos show glimpses of life in
  America from years gone by. From home life,
  school days and the work place, you can relive a
  style of life that we all loved and cherished.

13
Nostalgia

• Coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer, a Swiss medical
  student.
• Made up of two Greek roots.
• nostos meaning returning home.
• algos meaning pain/longing.
• The pain a sick person feels because he wishes
  to return to his native land, and fears never to
  see it again.

14
Cap, Family, and Turkey

• Its not just wistful. Its concrete.

15
Complex Emotions

• A feeling of sadness and longing that is not
  akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the
  mist resembles the rain.
• - Longfellow

16
Youth

• Nostalgia does have its uses. It can call us
  back to our younger, more optimistic selves. It
  can also siphon off the grief that comes with
  aging and loss. But it can also be a trap, a
  hiding place we retreat to when the present is
  unpleasant or confusing, and we don't want to
  face it or ourselves.
• - Ann Taylor, NPR

17
Nostalgia

• Memory of past, connected to present.
• Something classic.
• Tradition
• A new twist on a golden time.
• Needs rich description.
• Concrete emotion or longing.
• Cant just long for the pastneed to explain why.

18
Were and Are

• Its what we were and what we hadbut total
  through the present.
• There needs to be a now angle. Its not just a
  memory.

19
Senses

• Bender
• How can the reader hold on to what an author
  says in any piece of writing if they can not see
  what the author sees, hear what she hears, taste
  what she tastes, smell what she smells, and touch
  what she touches?

20
Confrontation

• When at last you are confronting the truth of
  your life honestly in words, you have found your
  voice. And with that comes a terrific freedom to
  write about anything else, tooanything else at
  all.
• - Gerard on p. 141

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Craft

• Interesting turns of phrase.
• Fresh metaphors.
• Lively and scenic presentation.
• Shunning clichés and obvious endings.
• Writing that sings.
• Newspapers AP Style, minimal adjectives, word
  economy.
• Bender use sound and rhythm (lyrically as poems
  do).

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Language That Sings

• Especially in a nostalgia essay.

23
Memory, But Why

• Why are you remembering this?
• What does it mean?

24
A Kind of History Essay

• But its your history.

25
Nostalgia Questions

• What do you remember about your past?
• Why?
• How does in connect to the present or future?
• What is the apparent/deeper subject?
• Is there a news hook?
• Whats the emotion?
• What are the concrete details?