Donald
M. Murray tells about reading a World War II story and interpreting it through
his own experience as a paratrooper in that war.
His
wife worked in the Pentagon during World War II and when she reads the same book, “she will read a different book,” says Murray in The Craft of Revision.
Murray
continues, “When my daughters, who were … raised during the Vietnam era, read
it, they will each read a still
different text.”
In the
same way, your memoir’s readers will
interpret your stories through their own experiences and historical eras.
Murray says:
“One of the great challenges of the writer
is to produce a text that will cause
readers to draw on their different experiences and still understand what we
have to say.”
How can
you write stories from your past that will resonate with readers growing up in
a different epoch? Perhaps some of your readers have not yet been born!
“The first step,” Murray says, “is to recognize that our world may be
different from the reader’s.”
In
addition to recognizing readers will
live in a different historical setting, he says, “We must recognize that our readers may
not share our religion; our political party; [or] our economic perspective.…”
In
writing a book about World War II, Murray says, “I must remember that my
readers may not know what an M-1—our rifle—was, or a C-45—the two-engine troop-carrier
plane from which we jumped. They may never have heard of the Maginot Line … or
the SS …; may not even know of the Holocaust.…”
Imagine
the year is 2040 and your great-grandson, age twenty-five, is reading your
memoir.
Will he
understand that when your house caught fire in 1962, you could not run outside
with your phone to call the fire department because phones were attached to the
wall with a cord? And that’s why you had to stay inside to call for help, and
that’s why your pajamas caught fire? And that’s why your legs have scars?
If you
came of age during the Vietnam era, especially if you or a loved one was
drafted into the military, you’ll want readers to understand the political,
social, and religious factors that divided and rocked our nation during those
years. (You’ll probably need to explain what the draft was, too.)
Charlie
Hale has compiled several brilliant pieces about both World War II and the war
in Vietnam, including I Remember: Viet Nam, my friends, and Memorial Day.
Over at
Diana Trautwein’s blog, she writes “It was the mid 1960’s and the escalating
war in Vietnam brought deep soul-searching for many men of draft-able age. My
husband had a unique up-bringing which led to an unusual choice, a choice which
took him far away from the jungles of [Vietnam].… A saving grace in the draft
process was to register as a 1-W—a ‘person opposed to bearing arms by reason of
personal religious conviction.’ And that’s exactly what my husband had done.…
He had registered as a conscientious objector (CO) … [and] that meant two years
of service offered in lieu of joining the military. My husband wanted to do
those two years somewhere far from home.…” (from An African Journal—Post One: Beneath the Surface)
If you
want to witness a master craftsman make history come alive, take seven minutes at
Charlie Hale’s blog for his video, The Images, Stories, and Songs of War. He uses black and white photos, songs of
the era, and his concise narrative to capture both World War II and Vietnam—and their stark differences. It is a
riveting piece.
Learn
from Donald M. Murray, Charlie Hale, and Diana Trautwein. Capture the social,
political, religious, and economic milieu of your life stories. Your history
and your world are different from those of your readers but with a bit of
effort, you can do what Murray says: “produce
a text that will cause readers to draw on their different experiences and still
understand what [you] have to say.”
