August Roundtable Discussion – Free for all
Gender and Memoir
with Jerry Waxler
August 9, 2012
4 PM PDT 5 PM MDT 6 PM CDT 7 PM EDT
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Memoirs break down barriers by letting us see the world through each other’s eyes. In our Roundtable we’ll explore the ways that memoirs can expand understanding between the genders.
We’re talking with Jerry Waxler, about the lessons he has learned about gender, not only from woman, but also from men who have traveled their own gender-related path. And we’ll invite listeners to pay attention to this aspect of their story. By becoming more aware of gender-centric scenes and stories, you too can offer this important part of your world to your readers.
Questions to consider: When you ask yourself “who is my audience?” consider both sexes. What will aspects of your gender-related experience will readers relate to?
Jerry will share with us the lessons he learned from the many memoirs he reviews on his wonderful site Memory Writers Network.
Some of the lessons we can learn from memoirs:
Girlie-girls (Japan Took the Jap Out of Me by Lisa Fineberg Cook)
Competent career women (Somewhere Toward the End by Diana Athill)
Journey from girlie-girl to competent career (Enough about Me by Jancee Dunn)
Grieving widow (Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup)
Rape (Lucky by Alice Sebold, Picking Cotton by Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson-Cannino)
Breast cancer: (Healing with Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey by Dianna Raab, The Sky Begins at your Feet, by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg)
Sexual abuse (I Know Terror Father Because I Know You by Sue William Silverman)
Marital abuse (Crazy Love by Leslie Morgan Steiner)
Woman friends (Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell)
Macho combat soldiers (House to House by David Bellavia)
Angry adolescent boys (The Islamist by Ed Hussein and True Notebooks by Mark Salzman)
Boys seeking identity (This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff)
Fathers and sons: (The Film Club by David Gilmour and Courage to Walk by Robert Waxler)
A man tries to find himself in a wheelchair (Seven Wheelchairs by Gary Presley)
A man tries to understand his failed marriages (Digging Deep by Boyd Lemon)
Biography
Jerry Waxler, M.S., is an experienced memoir workshop leader and a member of the advisory board for the National Association of Memoir Writers. He is a writing coach and therapist, and the author of Write Your Memoir in Four Weeks and Four Elements for Writers, and the creator of the Memory Writers Network blog, which features over 150 essays, book reviews, stories, and writing prompts about reading and writing .
