Each Other's Story

When I was teaching a course called “Memoir as Journalism” at both Stanford and OLLI, the main writing hurdle for many students seemed to be their doubts as to whether anyone else would even be interested in their story.

The solution, which I hit upon by accident, was to have each student present verbally an introduction to what they intended to write about their life for ten minutes or so in front of the rest of the class.

In every case, the affirmation from their classmates was immediate and universal — they always wanted to know more. And that motivated the story-tellers to keep going.

Over time, I also came to realize that the mere fear of writing itself was holding some of the students back. They could talk about their life, but writing about it was much more difficult.

For these students, I suggested alternatives — audio or video story-telling.

But beyond the mechanics, a much larger problem loomed over this whole business of whose stories got told. According to the book publishing industry, the memoirs of the rich, famous and powerful seemed to matter a lot.

Ordinary people’s not so much.

I beg to differ. Many great stories remain untold.

But it’s all in the telling.

HEADLINES:

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• Trump's forever grudge ties Epstein files to Russia "hoax" (Axios)

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• Democracy Upside Down (Atlantic)

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