NONFICTION MEMOIRS

“an account of one person’s personal life and experiences;

autobiography”(dictionary.com)

“a memoir is by far the best way to find out what it’s like to

be someone else”

“….we can be frank. Writers record thoughts in private, and readers,

also in private, enter the writer’s experience and

learn what it’s like”

“The insights from memoirs take me

far beyond my experience, and far beyond my comfort

zone”

Frank McCourt

“I’m in New York, land of the free and home of the brave, but I’m supposed to behave as if I were still in Limerick, Irish at all times. I’m expected to go out only with Irish girls who frighten me with the way they’re always in a state of grace saying no to everything and everyone unless it’s a Paddy Muck who wants to settle on a farm of land in Roscommon and bring up seven children, three cows, five sheep and a pig. I don’t know why Ireturned to America if I have to listen to the sad stories of Ireland’s sufferings and dance with country girls, Mullingar heifers, beef to the heels (McCourt 206).”

“ ‘Tis, Frank McCourt’s second memoir, is all the things his last memoir was-funny, sad as hell, written with sentences that seem to come from the dream you wish you hadn’t woken up from-but it has the additional benefit of being all about New York.”

-Robert Sullivan, Vogue