Annotated Bibliography
Barrington, Judith. Writing the Memoir. 2nd ed. Portland, OR: Eighth Mountain Press, 2002. A guide for writing in the memoir genre.
Bomer, Kathryn. Writing a Life: Teaching Memoir to Sharpen Insight, Shape Meaning—and Triumph over Tests. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005. A guide for writing in the memoir genre.
Bunting, Eve. Smoky Night. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1994. A children's picture book involving a child who learns to overcome stereotypes.
Cart, Michael, ed. Necessary Noise. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. A collection of short fiction about non-nuclear family configurations.
Clayton, Eve. The World's Best Memoirs. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2007. A collection of excerpts from famous autobiographical stories.
Coles, Robert. The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. Coles begins the book by explaining how his parents had instilled a love of literature - not merely for the sake of entertainment, but for the vast inferences that a reader can make about life. The introduction reads like a memoir. The remainder of the book is a series of self-revelation and reflections on conversation had with students during discussions about literature. It alludes to the necessity of questioning oneself.
Crutcher, Chris. Athletic Shorts. New York, New York: Dell Publishing, 1991. A collection of shorts stories that focus on bias and stereotyping.
Dow Adams, Timothy. "Richard Wright: Wearing the Mask". Telling Lies in American Autobiography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. An excerpt analyzing the autobiographical sketch in Black Boy in which critics emphasize the stretching of truth as stories are recalled/created by the author.
Flake, Sharon G. You Don't Even Know Me: Short Stories and Poems about Boys. New York: New York: Disney book Group, 2010. A collection of poems and short stories specifically focused on helping adolescent boys deal with real life issues including stereotypes.
Flake, Sharon G. Who Am I Without Him? New York: New York: Hyperion, 2005. Truth-filled tales about the trials of being a young female.
Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. A writing guide that discusses and demonstrates the craft of writing.
Goldberg, Natalie. Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir. New York: Free Press. 2007. A collection of writing prompts with very specific directions to guide the writer toward reader-worthy text.
Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York, NY: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2003. Perhaps too mature of a read for most middle school students; however, this book is an excellent place for an adult reader to explore issues regarding race, ethnicity, and religion and the concept of lying.
Johnson, Harriet McBryde. Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life. New York: Picador, 2006. A memoir written by a remarkably resilient and self-confident woman with congenital neuromuscular disease. The writing is focused on the stereotypical notions that she has lived to dispel.
Lester, Julius. "Morality and the New Huckleberry Finn" in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Case Study in Controversy. Gerald Graff, ed. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1995. A critical analysis of the failings of Mark Twain to paint an accurate picture of Jim as an African American man.
Loughery, John. Into the Widening World. New York, NY: Persea Books, 1995. A collection of short stories from around the world.
Norton, Lisa Dale. Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir. New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin, 2008. A short, but much focused, guide on writing memoirs.
Olds, Sharon. "On the Subway." Poetry Magazine, http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=2161. (Accessed July 10, 2012.) A short memoir about race relations that is written in poem form.
Orenstein, Peggy. Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2011. A mother's autobiographical reflection on how society promotes anti-feminist stereotypes on to young girls.
Orenstein, Peggy. "What's Wrong with Cinderella?" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/magazine/24princess.t.html?pagewanted=all, December 24, 2006. A tirade about how consumerism creates a limiting 'princess' mold for which to raise girls.
Pascal, Roy. Design and Truth in Autobiography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960. An explanation of design and the use of truth in autobiography.
Richard Ohmann. Use Definite, Specific, Concrete Language. College English, Vol. 41, No. 4 Dec. 1979, (p. 390-397) National Council of Teachers of English. A look at the dominant values presented in style manuals.
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003. A memoir presented in graphic novel form.
Thomas, Etan. Fatherhood: Rising to the Ultimate Challenge. New York: New American Library, 2012. A collection of essays, reflections, and memoirs about parenting.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy (American Hunger). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005. An autobiography that, at its core, glimpses the life of an African American from 1910's through the 1930's. The major themes are race relations, lying, violence, intellectual curiosity, and self-fulfillment.
Yagoda, Ben. Memoir: A History. New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2009. A history of memoir writing that suggests the changes in format, style, and expectation throughout the history of the genre.
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