1. Autobiographical Genres MemoirAutobiographyBiography Personal Narrative

2. 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 someone’s life  Contains anecdotes, memories, trips and cherished moments  Is about another person

4. Personal Narrative  Focus is on a particular event in a person/writer’s life  1 st 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 one’s 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

6. Characteristics of the Memoir Form  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

7. 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

8. 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!

9. 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)