september seven assignment

Growing up with a journalist mother, I was constantly being kept up to date with the goings-on of the writing world. It seemed only fitting that I would follow in her footsteps but it was a very different and evolving world I was entering than the one she did almost 30 years ago. Technology is key, understanding it and utilizing it seemed to be her mantra to me when I began school and thinking about studying writing.

This class is the perfect opportunity to work on my skills as a writer in this new and exciting world where your work can be published in an instant and paper is slowing becoming a thing of the past.
In past nonfiction classes, I've almost always worked on personal memoirs and as much as I like to write about myself and my feelings and experience, it comes easy to me. Never once did writing a memoir challenge me and I'm definitely not going to get a job straight out of college writing my own memoirs. I'm looking for the learning experience of writing and reporting in a controlled setting like the classroom and learning to integrate technology as well.

One of my favorite nonfiction writers is Dave Eggers, I can't say this has always been true though. I first read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius last semester for another class and I hated it. It was his personal memoir and was scattered and confusing, often transitioning to rambling thoughts and hypothetical situations that didn't make sense. But, this summer I read his work Zeitoun, the story of a Muslim family in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and loved it. His use of details and the simplicity of his words and structure made the book so compelling that I couldn't put it down. He utilized detailed flashbacks to create vivid characters that stuck around long after I finished the book. I respect Eggers much more after reading Zeitoun. 


My second favorite nonfiction writer would have to be Jeannette Walls, the author of The Glass Castle. I actually read the book many years ago but the story and her writing has stuck with me since. Her memoir is haunting and I cannot even imagine the courage it took her to actually sit down and write about her childhood and growing up homeless for parts of her life. I think experiences like that can either shape who you become or can be something that you push to the back of your mind and hope it doesn't resurface. In either case, Walls escaped her family and didn't let what they were and what she used to be affect what she wanted to become and her memoir is a true story of courage.