B5. Reading Memoirs: Why We Read About the Lives of Others

Memoir is a very popular genre that allows us, as readers, to enter into the “real life” of the writer.  We will read Becoming by Michelle Obama and Inheritance by Dani Shapiro. Each of these vastly different books will give us the opportunity to engage in the life of the author, each an extraordinary person who has written a fascinating memoir.

Marcia Tannenbaum has been teaching at WISE for many years. She was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Hartford in the Legal Studies Department. At Nichols College, she created and taught courses in Law, Literature and Literature of the Holocaust.  She has an M.A. in English from Simmons and a J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law.

REQUIRED BOOKS:  Becoming, Michelle Obama, (2018), Crown. ISBN 978-1524761338. Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity and Love, Dani Shapiro (2019), Knopf.  ISBN 978-1524732714.

OPTIONAL BOOKS: Why We Write About Ourselves, Meredith Maran (ed.).  Penguin Paperback.  ISBN 978-00142181973

READING FOR THE FIRST CLASS:  Start reading Becoming.  Bring a paragraph that you would like to share from a memoir you have read or a childhood memory you have written about.