Autobiography
Autobiography has its roots in Ancient Greece with Xenophon, who wrote the story of his part in the grand campaign to seize the throne of Persia in 400 B.C. Writing this memoir thirty years later, he chose to write in the third person, not how we commonly think of autobiography or memoir. It was, in its time, a runaway hit. Johnson argued that "the most truthful life-writing is when the writer tells his own story since only he knows the whole truth about himself." 10 Fast-forward to the current day, when autobiography and memoir have become best sellers, not unlike Xenophon's. Many are well-known political figures, sports icons or stars in the entertainment world. They have grand stories to tell about big, exciting moments and events. But doesn't everyone have a story to tell, or many stories for that matter?
Lucy Calkins uses the phrase, "making memoir out of the pieces of our lives" when she discusses students writing autobiography. In her ground-breaking book, The Art of Teaching Writing, she quotes Virginia Woolf on this subject: "A memoir is not what happens, but the person to whom things happen." 11 Calkins suggests that the "pieces," the things that happens, are the narratives that are developed and shaped into autobiography. For young student authors, these pieces are the small moments in their lives that become their stories.
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