Memory, Muses, Memoir

Memory, Muses, Memoir PDF Author: Deb Everson Borofka
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1440180334
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Why is the memoir genre so important? What is it that drives us to tell our own stories? The ancient Greek myth of Goddess Memory, and her daughters, the Muses, offers new ways to re-enter the stories of our lives and shape them in surprising ways. Mnemosyne's birthing of the Muses underscores her commitment to express all of the facets of her personal story: grief, joy, love, body, breath, history, spirituality, reverie, and humor. The memoirist follows Mnemosyne's imaginal lineage in crafting all memoirs. Memories live in matter, in the very cells of our bodies. Writing our life stories allows us to consider the content of our experiences, the plurality of perspectives from which we can choose to shape them, and the use that we want to make of them. We may choose to write for many reasons, psychological, physical, and cultural healing being just a few. This book suggests the exploration of an imaginable field is possible when we look at how figures from Greek mythology continue to inspire contemporary life writing.

Memory, Muses, Memoir

Memory, Muses, Memoir PDF Author: Deb Everson Borofka
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1440180334
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book

Book Description
Why is the memoir genre so important? What is it that drives us to tell our own stories? The ancient Greek myth of Goddess Memory, and her daughters, the Muses, offers new ways to re-enter the stories of our lives and shape them in surprising ways. Mnemosyne's birthing of the Muses underscores her commitment to express all of the facets of her personal story: grief, joy, love, body, breath, history, spirituality, reverie, and humor. The memoirist follows Mnemosyne's imaginal lineage in crafting all memoirs. Memories live in matter, in the very cells of our bodies. Writing our life stories allows us to consider the content of our experiences, the plurality of perspectives from which we can choose to shape them, and the use that we want to make of them. We may choose to write for many reasons, psychological, physical, and cultural healing being just a few. This book suggests the exploration of an imaginable field is possible when we look at how figures from Greek mythology continue to inspire contemporary life writing.

The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness

The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness PDF Author: Wole Soyinka
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190285435
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Nobel Laureate in Literature Wole Soyinka considers all of Africa--indeed, all the world--as he poses this question: once repression stops, is reconciliation between oppressor and victim possible? In the face of centuries-long devastation wrought on the African continent and her Diaspora by slavery, colonialism, Apartheid, and the manifold faces of racism, what form of recompense could possibly suffice? In a voice as eloquent and humane as it is forceful, Soyinka boldly challenges in these pages the notions of simple forgiveness, confession, and absolution as strategies for social healing. Ultimately, he turns to art--poetry, music, painting, etc.--as the one source that can nourish the seed of reconciliation: art is the generous vessel that can hold together the burden of memory and the hope of forgiveness. Based on Soyinka's Stewart-McMillan lectures delivered at the DuBois Institute at Harvard, The Burden of Memory speaks not only to those concerned specifically with African politics, but also to anyone seeking the path to social justice through some of history's most inhospitable terrain.

Memoirs of a Muse

Memoirs of a Muse PDF Author: Lara Vapnyar
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400077001
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Tanya is a typical teenager living with her bookish professor mother in a cramped Soviet apartment. She is obsessed with Dostoyevksy, and noticing that he always portrays his mistress and muse in his novels–never his wife–she determines to become a companion to a great writer. Her opportunity comes when, as a college graduate newly emigrated to America, she attends a Manhattan bookstore reading by Mark Schneider, a Significant New York Novelist. Tanya quickly moves in with Mark, ready to dazzle in bed, to serve and inspire . . . if only he would spend a little more time writing. But as she struggles to better understand her role as Muse, Tanya also learns more than she expected about the destiny she has imagined for herself. A touching and very funny novel in the great tradition of Russian realism, Memoirs of a Muse is also a lively meditation on the mysteries and absurdities of artistic inspiration.

In Memory of Memory

In Memory of Memory PDF Author: Maria Stepanova
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811228843
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
An exploration of life at the margins of history from one of Russia’s most exciting contemporary writers Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize Winner of the MLA Lois Roth Translation Award With the death of her aunt, the narrator is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century. In dialogue with writers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, and Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Dipping into various forms—essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue, and historical documents—Stepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.

The Book of Memory

The Book of Memory PDF Author: Petina Gappah
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374714886
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The story that you have asked me to tell you does not begin with the pitiful ugliness of Lloyd’s death. It begins on a long-ago day in August when the sun seared my blistered face and I was nine years old and my father and mother sold me to a strange man. Memory, the narrator of Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory, is an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, after being sentenced for murder. As part of her appeal, her lawyer insists that she write down what happened as she remembers it. The death penalty is a mandatory sentence for murder, and Memory is, both literally and metaphorically, writing for her life. As her story unfolds, Memory reveals that she has been tried and convicted for the murder of Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father. But who was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death? And did everything happen exactly as she remembers? Moving between the townships of the poor and the suburbs of the rich, and between past and present, the 2009 Guardian First Book Award–winning writer Petina Gappah weaves a compelling tale of love, obsession, the relentlessness of fate, and the treachery of memory.

From Memory to Memoir

From Memory to Memoir PDF Author: Mark David Gerson
Publisher: MDG Media International
ISBN: 1950189015
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Get the Stories of Your Life onto the Page Today! • Share Your Wisdom...naturally, spontaneously and without struggle • Craft Rich, Compelling Stories...regardless of writing experience or perceived ability • Engage, Entertain and Inspire...with eloquence, confidence and ease What you have lived is unique. What you have learned through your years of living is beyond price. And the value of all you share through your words is incalculable. GET THE STORIES OF YOUR LIFE ONTO THE PAGE TODAY! "The writing guide every memoirist has been waiting for!" – Nancy Pogue LaTurner, author of Voluntary Nomads Whoever you are, whatever your experiences, whatever your perceived writing ability, From Memory to Memoir will connect you not only with the stories you remember but with the stories you have forgotten. It will serve up the inspiration guaranteed to get you writing and keep you writing, the tools and techniques guaranteed to help you craft a rich, compelling narrative, and the support guaranteed to sustain you from the initial word of your book’s first draft to the final word of its ultimate draft. "Join me on this adventure of a lifetime...this journey into the experience of your own creativity as, together, we write the stories of your life!"

Beyond the Archive

Beyond the Archive PDF Author: Jens Brockmeier
Publisher: Explorations in Narrative Psyc
ISBN: 0199861560
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Our longstanding view of memory and remembering is in the midst of a profound transformation. This transformation does not only affect our concept of memory or a particular idea of how we remember and forget; it is a wider cultural process. In order to understand it, one must step back and consider what is meant when we say memory. Brockmeier's far-ranging studies offer such a perspective, synthesizing understandings of remembering from the neurosciences, humanities, social studies, and in key works of autobiographical literature and life-writing. His conclusions force us to radically rethink our very notion of memory as an archive of the past, one that suggests the natural existence of a distinctive human capacity (or a set of neuronal systems) enabling us to "encode," "store," and "recall" past experiences. Now, propelled by new scientific insights and digital technologies, a new picture is emerging. It shows that there are many cultural forms of remembering and forgetting, embedded in a broad spectrum of human activities and artifacts. This picture is more complex than any notion of memory as storage of the past would allow. Indeed it comes with a number of alternatives to the archival memory, one of which Brockmeier describes as the narrative approach. The narrative approach not only permits us to explore the storied weave of our most personal form of remembering--that is, the autobiographical--it also sheds new light on the interrelations among memory, self, and culture.

Memory's Orbit

Memory's Orbit PDF Author: Joseph Natoli
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486893
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Mixing memoir and cultural criticism, Memory's Orbit examines the intersections between a wide range of films and current events, finding its theme and orbiting narrative structure in the personal stories we live within and their relationship to the social and cultural order. Joseph Natoli covers such films as The Matrix, American Beauty, Fight Club, Eyes Wide Shut, and American History X, as well as such headline events as the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., the dot-com boom, the WTO protests in Seattle, and Bush versus Gore, consistently identifying those aspects of the social order that have shaped his narrating frame. Eschewing theoretical exposition and jargon, Natoli performs postmodern critique, and this book continues his innovative work in the genre of cultural studies.

Wandering Memory

Wandering Memory PDF Author: Jan J. Dominique
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813945879
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
The daughter of Haitian journalist and pro-democracy activist Jean Léopold Dominique, who was assassinated in 2000, Jan J. Dominique offers a memoir that provides a uniquely personal perspective on the tumultuous end of the twentieth century in Haiti. Wandering Memory is her elegy for a father and an ode to a beloved, suffering homeland. The book charts the biographical, emotional, and literary journey of a woman moving from one place to another, attempting to return to her craft and put together the pieces of her life in the aftermath of family tragedy. Dominique writes eloquently about love, loss, and traumas both horrifically specific and tragically universal. For readers familiar with Jean Dominique and his life’s work at Radio Haïti, the book offers an intimate perspective on a tale of mythic proportions. For the reading public at large, it offers an approachable and resonant introduction to contemporary Haitian literature, history, and identity.

The Tenth Muse

The Tenth Muse PDF Author: Judith Jones
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307498255
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
From the legendary editor who helped shape modern cookbook publishing-one of the food world's most admired figures-comes this evocative and inspiring memoir. Living in Paris after World War II, Jones broke free of bland American food and reveled in everyday French culinary delights. On returning to the States she published Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The rest is publishing and gastronomic history. A new world now opened up to Jones as she discovered, with her husband Evan, the delights of American food, publishing some of the premier culinary luminaries of the twentieth century: from Julia Child, James Beard, and M.F.K. Fisher to Claudia Roden, Edna Lewis, and Lidia Bastianich. Here also are fifty of Jones's favorite recipes collected over a lifetime of cooking-each with its own story and special tips. The Tenth Muse is an absolutely charming memoir by a woman who was present at the creation of the American food revolution and played a pivotal role in shaping it.