Autobiographical Genres

1
Autobiographical Genres

• Memoir
• Autobiography
• Biography
• Personal Narrative

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Autobiography

• Who you are in life Based on facts and
  research!
• What life means to you Your feelings, both past
  and present
• What your outlook on the future is Usually
  based on one event
• Written by same person that it is about

3
Biography

• History of a lifetime Must cover entire life
• Most important facts and events of someones life
• Contains anecdotes, memories, trips and cherished
  moments
• Is about another person

4
Personal Narrative

• Focus is on a particular event in a
  person/writers life
• 1st person
• Uses diction and sensory details to express
  emotions that place the reader in the personal
  experience

5
Memoir

• Autobiographical writing
• Captures certain highlights or meaningful moments
  in ones past
• Contemplation of the meaning of that event at the
  time of the writing of the memoir
• Much more emotional and connects the writer to
  someone or something that had and impact on their
  life

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Characteristics of the MemoirForm

• Focus on a brief period of time or series of
  related events
• Narrative structure (storytelling elements like
  setting, plot, imagery, characterization,
  foreshadowing/flashback, and irony and symbolism)
• Retrospective
• Fictional quality
• Higher emotional level/more personal
  reconstruction of the events and their impact

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Memoirs Another perspective

• Explores an event or series of related events
  that remain lodged in memory
• Describes the events and then shows, either
  directly or indirectly why they are significant
• WHY do you STILL remember them?
• Focused in time (not long)
• Focuses on problem/conflict and its resolution
  and why the resolution is significant in your life

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Why we read memoirs

• BECAUSE GOOD READERS
• Make connections
• Question
• Visualize
• Infer
• Synthesize
• and these things expose essential truths and
  help us evaluate our own lives and the world
  around us!

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Good Readers

• Make connections to books or works they read by
• 1. Connect books they read by connecting it to
  another book (text-to-text)
• 2. Connect to something in their own life (text
  to self)