Class 13 - Reportage

Checking In

As usual, we’ll give you five minutes to check in and see how you are all doing.

Kathleen Jamie

We’re moving from writing about the self to writing about the world — from memoir to reportage. Your assigned reading was Kathleen Jamie’s Pathologies, a long piece that explores our bodies, the idea of nature, grief, and curiosity — among other things.

What I want you to do is look through the piece again, and then post one line — a sentence or a few words — in the chat from the piece that particularly struck you. Quote it directly, without comment.

When we’ve all done this, we’re going to write for 6 minutes in response to this piece. Remember, this is creative nonfiction. So what we write should be true, and a story, and well-told!

The Next Few Sessions

We’ve had a think about the next few weeks, and we’ve come to a decision that we’re going to mix things up a bit. So we’re going to rethink what we’re going to do. We know that what’s on your mind is what’s going on in Myanmar/Burma at the moment. And as we’re talking about memoir and reportage — about telling the stories that matter — this is your life, this is your experience, and these are your stories to tell.

We also want to find a way to make your midterm pieces as powerful as possible. So we’re going to use the next few sessions to help you plan, research, write and edit a single piece of memoir or reportage that reflects the theme: what I want the world to know about Burma/Myanmar.

This doesn’t have to be the title, but this is what we are looking for.

What you write doesn’t have to be about the current conflict. It might be memories of childhood. It might be how delicious လက်ဖက်သုပ် (tea-leaf salad) is, mixing memoir and the complex history of the dish.

Why are we doing this? Beause these are terrible, terrible times, and it’s hard to think about anything else. So we want to acknowledge this, to give you a chance to make your voice heard — and also to minimise extra stress by giving you lots of extra work outside class. So you will have a chance to intensively work on your midterm pieces in-class, and get lots of guidance as you write and rewrite.

Here’s how we see the next few weeks going:

• 21 March: Brainstorming
• 2 April: Writing a pitch proposal
• 4 April: Research
• 9 April: First draft workshop
• 11 April: Second draft workshop

Myanmar Ghosts

We’re going to start by sharing an article Will wrote five years ago about Myanmar ghosts. We’ll give you 15 minutes to read it, and to make some notes on what stories about life in Myanmar/Burma this story provokes.

What I want the world to know…

Now, let’s get brainstorming. Write, “What I want the world to know about Myanmar/Burma…” and then keep writing (you can choose whether to call the country Myanmar or Burma!)

When you run of of ideas, start a new line. Write again, “What I want the world to know about Myanmar / Burma…” and again keep on writing.

When you’ve done this, go back, and mark the one or two ideas that you care about most.

We’ll share these afterwards.

Homework

For your homework, do some research to see what other articles are written on this topic (or on a similar topic). Read these articles, share links on the Our Stories padlet