Memoir

During the first two weeks of Writing 37, I have worked on various readings, namely, "Navigating Genres" by Kerry Dirk, "The Lost Sister: An Elegy" by Joyce Carol Oates, and "The Meandering River" by Sue William Silverman that have helped me write an exploratory draft for my Genre Analysis assignment. I learned how to use the annotations from the readings as an outline of key points to integrate primary and secondary sources of evidence as support to my claims in the essay. As such, the exploratory draft demonstrates how I learned to identify the conventional features of a genre, specifically, a memoir.

My first explorative draft on Joyce Carol Oates' "The Lost Sister: An Elegy"

My Annotations of "The Lost Sister: An Elegy"

Joyce Carol Oates' Memoir

One may ask, "What is a Memoir?" or "What are the characteristic features of a memoir?"

Memoirs are works of creative non-fiction that reflect upon the events of the life of a person. They are an insight into the process of transformation of the mind of an author that portrays how the perceptions of the author are affected by the experience.

Features of a Memoir

Genre awareness is an essential skill in critical reading and writing because it acts as a framework for our understanding of the text by setting up expectations of the conventions of a genre. I have learned that although genres tend to overlap, there are distinguishable features of a text that categorize it into a particular genre.

Our genre knowledge guides us as critical writers as it lays down the guidelines for approaching a wide spectrum of genres effectively. As a member of the academic discourse community, it is essential to follow the norms of writing various genres to engage the audience. Therefore, through working on the exploratory draft for Genre Analysis, I have been able to widen my genre awareness.