Welcome back! This week, we’re going to dive into Tara Westover’s brilliant work, and explore the complex relationship between remembering and forgetting.
Thanks for your stories on Canvas, and for your comments on other people’s stories. We will keep using this throughout the rest of the course.
First Exercise: Remembering
Now we’re going to do a simple warm-up exercise on this week’s topic — memory! Start by looking at the following list of topics. Choose a topic that interests you or speaks to you, and note down one specific incident you want to write about:
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A vivid childhood memory.
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A time an unexpected visitor came to your home.
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A time you lost something important.
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When you first realised your parents could be wrong.
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When someone you loved or respected let you down.
Write for 15 minutes, then we’ll share.
Listening to the text
Let’s now plunge into Westover’s text. Tara Westover was born in the USA in 1986 to a Mormon survivalist family. Her first book, Educated, is the story of her journey from her Mormon roots in Idaho to Cambridge University. The book has won multiple awards, and has been a global bestseller.
I’ll give you five minutes to look over the text, and choose a section — no more than three sentences — that you want to share.
Response Writing
People’s memories often spark memories of our own. This is how memory works. It is triggered by the images, ideas, stories that others share.
Take one of the sentences from Westover’s book that sparks a memory, and use this sentence as the title for a new piece of writing. What is the memory that it sparks? Make a few notes about the memory. Then start writing. Tell the story of the memory that Westover has sparked or provoked!
Homework
There are two homework tasks this time!
1. Writing
Please also post ONE piece of writing from today on Canvas.
2. Responding
Comment on ONE other writer’s writing on Canvas! It can be any piece of writing you like. In your comment, don’t just say “I like this,” but say what struck you about the piece, what questions it raised, what you wanted to know more about, what you didn’t understand, what images you liked… So think a bit more deeply so that you can get into dialogue with the writer!