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The Memoir Project
Dates/Times:
Kick-off Videoconference Event
March 14, 2007; 1:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.
Virtual Memoir Festival
Friday, May 18, 2007; 10:00 a.m. - ?? (Time depends on the total number of sites registered for the project)
Target Age Level: Students in grades 9-12 or community colleges studying English, writing, arts or humanities
Cost: Free!
Program Description:
As part of the "One Book, One Philadelphia" Project, MAGPI will sponsor an a two month virtual memoir project. Students involved in the Memoir Project will have an opportunity to explore various forms of memoirs, participate in an interactive videoconference with the author of Waiting for Snow in
Students will have an opportunity to hear from Dr. Carlos Eire and learn what inspired him to write Waiting for Snow in
Each teacher that participates in this project will receive a copy of Waiting for Snow in Havana, compliments of The Free Library of Philadelphia.
It is not expected that all students will be familiar with the whole of Eire's work; however, students should be familiar with the chapters indicated below.
Take a look at the resources to help teach about memoir and how this project meets Pennsylvania State Standards!
Preparing Students for the Kick-off Videoconference Event:
Review and Discuss chapters of Waiting for Snow in Havana : Prior to the videoconference, students should be familiar with chapters 21 and 28 of Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy. We encourage students to read the book in its entirety, but realize that is not always possible.
Review and Discuss various types of memoirs: Students should be familiar with the various ways in which one could construct a memoir. Although it is categorized as a literary genre, memoirs could take the form of books, poems, songs, dance, documentaries and multi-media projects.
Watch Eire's National Book Award Acceptance Speech (optional): If you desired, you could have students watch Dr. Eire's National Book Award Acceptance speech. A streaming video of this event can be found at www.researchchannel.org. Simply search the site for "Eire."
Creating the Memoir:
Each student will be challenged to compose a memoir about a certain time in their life. Memoirs should be inspired by the essential question: “I remember when…”
Memoirs can be composed in various formats:
- Artistic Piece (visual art, music, dance, performance)
- Written Piece
- Digital Media Piece
Presenting the Memoirs:
Each school will select 2-3 memoirs to share as part of the “Virtual Memoir Festival” on May 18, 2007
Each school should select a ‘theme’ for the 2-3 memoirs they will be presenting (i.e. a theme could be “Middle School” or “Friends” or “Family” or “Challenges” or “Successes”).
Each school will have 15 minutes for their presentation (10 minutes to present and 5 minutes for the Q&A).
We suggest that each school show a variety of types of memoirs during their presentation.
Presentations should be creative!
Don't forget to blog! Teachers and students can participate in our “Memoir Blog” – posting ideas and searching for feedback. This blog will go 'live' on March 14th!
Resources/Ideas to Help Teach about Memoir
Memoirs are often characterized by their strong voice. During the virtual memoir project, we are encouraging students to find their voice using a medium that speaks to them. Although we are not choosing to put any parameters on the project, you may wish to do so depending on the academic standards to hope to meet through participation in this project
Authentic Writing: Childhood Memory Story (From emints.org): This lesson plan guides students through creating a short piece about a childhood memory -
Students find their voices through multimedia (From edutopia.org): Take a look at the "Mi Barrio" project as an example of a multimedia memoir or personal documentary.
Look at "Almost a Woman" in contrast to "Waiting for Snow" using the PBS Masterpiece Theatre project: PBS's Almost a Woman is a dramatization of Esmerelda Santiago's prize-winning memoir. Santiago moved to New York City from rural Puerto Rico . PBS has a complete resource site to compliment the film.
Wartime Voices (part of Art in the 21st Century): Work with students to compare and contrast personal letters, memoirs, songs, poems and visual art that represent the experiences of wartime participants. Define "voice" in art and literature and create a narrative from the point of view of a wartime participant.
The Library of Congress' Teaching with Primary Sources Project: Lots of ideas for incorporating primary sources - including memoir.
·Writing Memoirs (from Teaching Matters): This comprehensive web-based tool is designed for middle school students; however, the outline of lesson topics might be helpful as you plan for this project.
The Year I Was Born: An Autobiographical Research Project (lesson from Read. Write. Think.): You might want to think about about modifying this project a bit and allow students to choose any year in their life.
Looking at Style: Defining and Exploring An Author's Choice: Use passages from Waiting for Snow in Havana in conjunction with this lesson from Read.Write.Think. By becoming more familiar with style, students can explore their own style in their memoir projects.
Web English Teacher - Autobiography, Biography, Memoir and Personal Narrative Site: A great collection of resources! http://www.webenglishteacher.com/biography.html
Born in Havana, Carlos Eire fled to the United States at the age of 11. He is currently the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University, where he has been a faculty member since 1996. An authority on religious reformations, faith, and spiritualism in modern Europe, Mr. Eire lectures widely, and is the author of From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth Century Spain and War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship From Erasmus to Calvin, and co-author of Jews, Christians, Muslims: A Comparative Introduction to Monotheistic Religions. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with his wife and their three children.
About Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
From Publisher's Weekly
"Metaphors matter to me, especially perfect ones," Yale historian Eire writes in this beautifully fashioned memoir, as he recounts one of many wonderfully vibrant stories from his boyhood in 1950s Havana. As imaginatively wrought as the finest piece of fiction, the book abounds with magical interpretations of ordinary boyhood events-playing in a friend's backyard is like a perilous journey through the jungle; setting off firecrackers becomes a lyrical, cosmic opera; a child's birthday party turns into a phantasmagoria of American pop cultural icons.
Taking his cue from his father, a man with "a very fertile, nearly inexhaustible imagination, totally dedicated to inventing past lives," Eire looks beyond the literal to see the mythological themes inherent in the epic struggle for identity that each of our lives represents. Into this fantastic idyll comes Castro-"Beelzebub, Herod, and the Seven-Headed Beast of the Apocalypse rolled into one"-overthrowing the Batista regime at the very end of 1958 and sweeping away everything that the author holds dear. A world that had been bursting with complicated, colorful meaning is replaced with the monotony of Castro's rhetoric and terrorizing "reform." Symbols of Jesus that had once provided spiritual enlightenment by popping up in the author's premonitions and dreams were now literally being demolished and destroyed by a government that has outlawed religion.
The final cataclysm comes when Eire and his brother, still young boys, are shipped off to the United States to seek safety and a better life (another paradise, perhaps). They never see their father again.As painful as Eire's journey has been, his ability to see tragedy and suffering as a constant source of redemption is what makes this book so powerful. Where his father believed that we live many lives in different bodies, Eire sees his own life as a series of deaths within the same body. "Dying can be beautiful," he writes, "And waking up is even more beautiful. Even when the world has changed." Taking his cue from his beloved Jesus, the author believes that we repeatedly die for our sins and are reborn into a new awareness of paradise. How fortunate for readers, then, that by way of Eire's "confessions," they too will be able to renew their souls through his transcendent words.
A Note about Pennsylvania State Standards
Depending on how individual educators interpret and manage the pre-and post-videoconference activities and direct students' memoir construction, the following standards may be met through participation in this project:
Arts and Humanities Standards:
9.1.12.A – Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities
9.1.12.B – Recognize, know, use and demonstrate a variety of appropriate arts elements and principles to produce, review and revise original works in the arts.
9.1.12.D – Delineate a unifying theme through the production of a work or art that reflects skills in media processes and techniques.
9.4.12.D – Analyze and interpret a philosophical position identified in works in the arts and humanities.
Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening Standards:
1.1.11.A: Analyze the structure of informational materials explaining how authors used these to achieve their purposes
1.1.11.F: Demonstrate after reading understanding and interpretation of both fiction and non-fiction text, including public documents.
1.2.11.A: Read and understand essential content of informational texts and documents in all academic areas.
1.2.11.C: Produce work in at least one literary genre that follows the conventions of the genre.
1.3.11.B: Analyze the relationships, uses and effectiveness of literary elements used by one or more authors in similar genres including characterization, setting, plot, theme, point of view, tone and style.
1.3.11.C: Analyze the effectiveness, in terms of literary quality, of the author’s use of literacy devices.
1.4.11.A: Write short stories, poems and plays.
1.6.11A: Listen to others.
1.6.11C: Speak using skills appropriate to formal speech situations.
1.6.11D: Contribute to discussions.
1.6.11F: Use media for learning purposes.
