We're often faced with a tangle of emotions when writing about the people who made us—parents, siblings, the family we were born into—which makes it hard to see them as complex people with their own valuable perspectives, rather than characters cast permanently in relation to us. This class approaches family writing from a place of deep curiosity. We'll practice writing about the people we know best as if they were intriguing strangers, and look at how personal narratives are shaped by the larger forces around them: history, culture, place, migration, and time. We'll read essays and memoir excerpts from authors writing about family to see how these elements play out on the page.
We'll discuss interviewing methods for having meaningful conversations with family, along with strategies for when a family member is out of reach. We'll talk about the obstacles this material can bring up and share some self-care tools. This is a generative seminar, not a workshop with formal critiquing of manuscript pages. The course is designed as an accompaniment class with reading, in-class writing, craft discussion, and low-stakes sharing of small excerpts. Anyone working on an essay, memoir, or family history project is welcome to join.
