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Andy Iniguez
Writing 39B
L. Kaminski
14 April 2015
CRRP
A Memoir is not another autobiography where one goes off talking about his/her entire
life rather it is like a canvas, where one is free to paint what they write in this case, and they tend
to write what is important to them and not what anyone else wants. This form of self-writing
gives the author freedom to tell his story in any way he likes including short stories or travel
memoirs. In Cousers essay, Memoir, portrays my idea that of a memoir when he states, Today,
memoirs often incorporate invented or enhanced material, and they often use novelistic
techniques. Indeed, they are themselves a form of literary art, (Couser 15). This quote supports
my idea of memoirs by illustrating how they can be told through different perspectives and
usually end with a relation to the story they tell or Invented material as Couser says. Some
examples include Maxine Kingstons The Woman Warrior and Joan Didions Goodbye to All
That, where both authors use their own form of writing a memoir to express some of the more
important times of their lives. Most memoirs seem to be written for a purpose to try and teach its
audience a lesson, but mostly to those that can relate to what the author is writing about.
In Kingstons A Woman Warrior, she starts off by telling a story her mom told her about
her Aunt who drowned herself, she starts off by saying, You must not tell anyone what I am
about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself.(Kingston 3). Her mother
uses this story to prevent her from having a baby of her own since she has just begun to
menstruate. It seems to me that Kingston uses these short stories to relate to other young woman
who are going through the same things with their mother and having what is called The Talk,

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with their parents. As Couser states this story told by Kingstons mother may be invented, which
can be the case due to the fact that Kingston didnt even know who she was. Kingston goes a
little further with her relations with others when she states, Walking erect (knees straight, toes
pointed forward, not pigeon-toed, which is Chinese-feminine) and speaking in an inaudible
voice, I have tried to turn myself American-feminine (Kingston 11). In this quote it seems
Kingston is trying to relate to those Chinese-Americans who are in the same situation as her and
are confused with what racial culture to follow. Kingston illustrates her struggle as a first
generation Chinese-American who has to accustom to her new culture and stride somewhat away
from her families original culture to fit into her new world. However, her decision come with
consequences because she believes it is against her morals to step out of the role of Chinese
society as her aunt did when she says, The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by
the villagers, but the familys deliberately forgetting her. Her betrayal maddened
them(Kingston 16). Its these lessons that these authors use to connect to their audience and
give them a sense of relation to someone other than themselves.
Memoirs are written with various forms of rhetoric including some of the more basic
concepts such as, ethos, pathos and logos. These forms of rhetoric are used in memoir for the
same reason of connecting with their audience by catching their attention through emotion, logic,
and credibility. Kingston uses these forms of rhetoric various times in her novel to appeal to her
audience. For example, when she tells the story of Fa Mu Lan to relate to her current life when
she states, And I have so many words"chink" words and "gook" words toothat they do not
fit on my skin(Kingston 53). In this quote Kingston illustrates how the degrading of Fa Mu Lan
as woman relates to her as she is degraded as a minority. This part of the story illustrates
connection to Kingstons audience through credibility and emotion through a first-hand

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experience that her audience may relate to when being undermined. Kingston also illustrates Fa
Mu Lan as an honorable woman when she says, After I grew up, I heard the chant of Fa Mu
Lan, the girl who took her fathers place in battle (Kingston 20). Although she had to break
tradition she was still able to honor her familys name. As for Kingstons she uses credibility of
Mu Lans story and the fact that she is a honorable woman and shows the relations she has with
her when she has to debate if it is morally correct for her to embrace and change the ways of her
dominant culture.
Oppression was a big factor in the rhetoric of Kingstons memoir, she writes in most of
her short stories by showing the belittling of women in these stories starting off with the story
her mom told her when she says, Woman in the Old China did not choose. Some man had
commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil (Kingston 6). This quote portrays the way
woman were viewed in Kingstons short story and she uses this to teach the lesson that woman
are not always to be belittled and that she can change the view of others towards woman as she
did with her view of Chinese Americans. These topics of persuading others that oppression or
that following your least dominant culture illustrates to us how Kingstons short stories are
exactly what a memoir should be like.
On the other hand there are different ways to write a memoir such as, Joan Didions
example in her memoir, Goodbye to All That, where she seems to be writing a travel memoir.
What I mean by this is that when Didion writes about her past experiences she does it from her
previous travels to certain places she loved the most or couldnt forget such as, New York, which
she writes about in Goodbye to All That. Didion attracts her audience through vivid details in her
story by illustrating to her readers her experience in New York and how they can relate to it by
visualizing the city that they too might have visited themselves. For instance, she portrays to us

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what she remembers when she says, To an Eastern child, particularly a child who has always
has an uncle on Wall Street and who has spent several hundred Saturdays first at F.A.O.
Schwarz But to those of us who came from places where no one had heard of Lester Lanin and
Grand Central Station was a Saturday radio program, where Wall Street and Fifth Avenue and
Madison Avenue were not places at all but (Didion 3). It is easy to analyze that Didon was
obviously aiming for her audience to be someone who she can share those emotionally
descriptive images with, she wants to illustrate to them that she can share the joy with those who
can relate to her travels. Although they were different techniques used in each story they both
had the same purpose of catching the readers attention and relating to them. Kingston and
Didion includes all the factors a memoir should have, which are a lesson or an idea to get the
audience to understand, show how his/her self can relate to the moral of the lesson as a sort of
credibility, and persuading the audiences through these stories with the use of rhetoric skills,
such as pathos, logos and ethos.