Memoir and the Power of Story

Why tell a story? Why tell your story? What, in fact, is storytelling? I put these questions out there not so much to answer them myself but to have you think about them, particularly because these questions go to the heart of writing literature of all kinds, to why we do it, why we write and tell stories, drawn from the crucible of the imagination as well as the very real world in which we exist and live our humanity. But even more so, these questions are pivotal to the endeavor of memoir writing and personal narrative.

For creative writers, especially those who go down this path beginning in their youth, it is a need that transcends the individual, going back to our prerecorded history as a species. Essentially, creative writers and all artists, for that matter, are in some manner rooted in the harmony of the cosmic that goes beyond the visible and tangible, and that rhythm, that pulse, must be expressed, manifested, in material form, in a way comprehendible to the mind through the senses.

Memoirists tell their stories because the universal truth of the human experience is something we are compelled to share, and one of the earliest modes through which we shared the common bond of our human condition was through story, oral storytelling. Storytelling gave rise to myth, and along with this, humans developed the early forms of painting, music, and dance, and from there, theater.

Memoir writers tell their stories because they seek the truth; they are searching for a deeper understanding of themselves (the origins to who they are in the present) and the relationships they have had that helped forge who they have become. Memoirists pursue that which all humans do—connection. Their quest is to reconnect with their past, with memory, and all that rises to the surface when venturing underground, so to speak, and, like an archaeologist, digging to find the answers, whether they like them or not.

Memoirists are on a creative journey to connect not just with themselves but with other human beings through the tale of their life experiences, showing their readers that they are just like them, that they too have known the joys and sorrows, the trials and tribulations, the hopes and dreams, both dashed and fulfilled, that we all go through as members of the human race. They break the spell we are often under that we are all alone in the world and thus isolated and invisible in the things we experience, in how we think and feel. Memoirists illustrate our shared kinship as human beings by connecting with their own understanding of who they are as a human themselves.

In writing toward self-discovery, memoir writers disclose who they are and in doing so tell us who we are. This is the power of memoir. This is the power of story.