Book Box: Why We Need Memoirs — 2 - Hindustan Times
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Book Box: Why We Need Memoirs — 2

Dec 04, 2022 06:55 PM IST

You don't have to be famous to write your memoirs. Here's why. Plus a chat with Dr Leena Chatterjee on why she gets management students to write their life stories.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Book Box! PREMIUM
Welcome to Book Box!

It’s a sunny winter afternoon on the Malabar Coast, and I am teaching a personal storytelling class at IIM Kozhikode.

Sixty students are seated in an amphitheatre-like classroom, on a campus spread over hillsides covered with coconut and chikoo trees. Many have come in from neighbouring towns, and some from as far away as France, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh. They are in their late thirties and forties, they’ve worked for a decade or more, and are now doing a management degree, studying weekends whilst they work. One’s a former air force pilot, one’s a doctor, another a petrochemical engineer, and others in information technology. Each is here because they share a hunger to take on more responsibility, and to reach for larger roles.

Learning to tell their story is a key part of this piece, I tell them.

Personal Storytelling class at IIM Kozhikode.
Personal Storytelling class at IIM Kozhikode.

‘Once you know who you are, and what you stand for, once you establish your credibility, you will persuade other people to follow you’, I point out, communicating collective wisdom from the management I studied, and from books like The Leaders Guide to Storytelling by Stephen Denning.

We do a storytelling exercise, reflecting on critical incidents in our lives, as the first step to understanding the values that shaped us. One man describes how he persuaded 12 families to leave their land to make place for a multi-crore gas pipeline, a woman speaks of fighting her way back to corporate life, another about the story of an amputee scaling Mount Everest that helped him confront his bereavement.

IIM Kozhikode.
IIM Kozhikode.

The motives for writing memoirs are many — a personal catharsis with grief, abuse, addiction, memorialising a story that would otherwise be forgotten, influencing public opinion for a cause or a community, communicating your expertise, and if you’re in the public eye, the money you might make from a tell-all.

If any of these reasons appeal to you, here are three hacks to help you start writing -

1. Journal – Five years ago I read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Her eight-week program taught me to record the highs and lows of my days, using prompts like ‘the best/worst part of the week’ or ‘Three things I am grateful for’. Journalling will help you get into the recording and reflecting mode. In addition, your journal could be the perfect raw material for your memoir.

Use pen and paper and an old style journal, don’t re-read your writing till much later, don’t go back and scratch out anything, says Julia Cameron, three pieces of advice I found helpful, once I managed to follow them.

The Artist's Way.
The Artist's Way.

2. Read these how-to books — Begin with The Memoir and the Memoirist by Thomas Larson, a primer that is packed with practical writing advice, with examples drawn from many interesting memoirs. Also read Inventing the Truth, edited by William Zinsser, where memoirists like Toni Morrison and Frank McCourt talk about their creative processes.

In Artful Truth, Helen De Bres contends with conundrums that crop up when you try to tell your story. Should you trust your memory? How much should you bare, especially when it involves other people? De Bres advances her arguments with expert allusions. By the time you finish her book, you will have a whole new reading list! For more read The Art of Memoir and also these fabulous books on writing.

Inventing the Truth, Artful Truths, and The Memoir and the Memoirist.
Inventing the Truth, Artful Truths, and The Memoir and the Memoirist.

3. Do these memoir writing courses — Phil Knight, Founder of Nike, famously went back to Stanford University to study creative writing, before he wrote his memoir Shoe Dog. Memoir writing courses will help kickstart your writing. Try these.

Finally, meet Dr Leena Chatterjee. This Professor of Organisational Behaviour at BITS School of Management, Mumbai, tells us how writing our memoirs helps us develop new frames of looking at ourselves. Here are edited excerpts of our conversation.

Dr Leena Chatterjee.
Dr Leena Chatterjee.

Tell us about your childhood reading.

We moved to Addis Ababa when I was about 7 and every week my father would give my sister and me one Ethiopian dollar as pocket money to buy whatever we liked. My best memories are of taking that shiny coin and going to the Cosmos bookstore where we bought Enid Blyton books. One of the things that have stayed with me was a love for books that go beyond the story, that connect you to an issue or an occupation, like the Shirley, Flight Attendant series did. In school, we read My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. I loved it so much that I read all the other books by the same author.

How has your reading changed over the years?

When I was younger I read everything - I’d pick up any book and gobble it up, right from Agatha Christie to Milan Kundera to A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee to A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes. My sister studied French at JNU, and through her, I got introduced to Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, Hiroshima Mon Amour by Marguerite Duras, and books by Simon de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Nowadays my reading is more sporadic, I’ve moved towards mysteries and thrillers and also historical fiction like Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. I love books based on psychology like The Silent Patient and The Interpretation of Murder.

What are your favourite books on teaching?

To Sir With Love was one of the most defining books of my teenage life, I loved the personalised attention and care ER Braithwaite gave his students. I also loved Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, he was such a wonderful teacher, full of respect and never talking down to either Jem or Scout.

What do you look for in a memoir?

I enjoy reading memoirs that are honest, and where the personal story is entwined in a larger historical context. Like Out of Africa and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

The highlight of the ‘Management of Self’ course you taught at IIM Calcutta was the autobiography that students had to write. Tell us what inspired this.

My training as a psychologist has taught me that most of us remember only some of the stories in our lives. Often these things are no longer relevant, yet we hold onto them, using them to define ourselves. If we want to change our definitions of ourselves, we need to go back and shine a spotlight on our lives.

Then there is the baggage we carry on our backs, in terms of undigested experiences. Writing helps us take these experiences off our backs, and put them onto paper – it may help us say it’s ok, no big deal and carry on.

What can people in their twenties gain from writing their memoirs?

Young people, because of the pressures they face, are not very kind to themselves. Specially in India, because of the weight of their parents' expectations, they start to expect too much of themselves. Writing their stories down helps them realise there is a crack in everything and that’s how the light comes in.

What’s most remarkable about these student memoirs?

I’ve been surprised by young people’s willingness to be open and vulnerable and to talk about difficult family relationships. Some stories stand out – a student writing, ‘We’re from a conservative family in Haryana and my father will just murder me if he knows I’m gay’.

They have been so many stories of sexual abuse that both boys and girls have had to go through, from a relative or a neighbour. The worst part of these stories is that children were not supported by adults. More than one person writes, ‘I was asked to hush up, told I must have misread the situation, I was just not believed.’

And finally, what are you reading these days?

I’ve just finished A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, which was gifted to me by a former student. I loved it so much that I went out and bought The Lincoln Highway by the same author. I also recently read The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny and am now looking forward to reading all the other books in the series.

***

For more inspiration on writing your story, check out these amazing memoirs.

Next week, I look back at the 100-plus books I read this year, picking out the best, as well as the DNFs — the ones I Did Not Finish.

Until then, happy reading!

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com

The views expressed are personal

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