Childhood Memories

     I enjoyed reading the excerpt from Becoming by Michelle Obama. She includes vivid imagery about her childhood that really helps the reader picture the imagery that she rights. For example, my favorite passage was when she was describing the memory of her and her boyfriend at the time, running through the field and how she says “And that’s it. It’s a small moment, insignificant in the end. It’s still with me for no reason but the silliness, for how it unpinned me just briefly from the more serious agenda that guided my every day.” The moment sounds so short, yet so memorable in the sense that she felt free and giddy at the time. Honestly, it’s quite refreshing to see snippets of her childhood described in such vivid detail. In Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, seemingly, the narrator reflects on her negative upbringing. My favorite passage in the reading (that I accidentally shared in class on Tuesday) is “I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself” (9). For some reason, I related to this passage. In the past, I’ve dealt with family ordeals where silence was used as the resolution. The one who chose to speak on the conflict may receive backlash. Words are a great way in expressing how one feels without making a conflict worse, especially among family and friends. By writing and speaking on these memories, she has broken out of the unhappiness that she felt as a child.

    On Memory and Memoir and The Art of Memoir, help to explain why authors that I talked about previously, speak of their childhood memories as they do. In The Art of Memoir, I especially like the passage that says “Memory is a pinball in a machine — it messily ricochets around between image, idea, fragments of scenes, stories you've heard. Then the machine goes tilt and snaps off. But most of the time, we keep memories packed away. I sometimes liken that moment of sudden unpacking to circus clowns pouring out of a miniature car trunk — how did so much fit into such a small space?” Like both Obama and Winterson, they detail various memories in small parts, shifting around from one time period to the next. In On Memory and Memoir, Freud finds it fascinating how people only remember parts of their childhood memories. The reading states, “These childhood memories, his own among them, intrigued Freud by their inexplicable nature. Why, he wondered, when so many significant moments are continually forming our consciousness and personality in our youngest years, do we later recall insignificant, even trivial, details.” The ambiguity of memory, in my opinion, makes this week’s readings even more fascinating when reflecting on the specific passages that I chose. Getting little glimpses into people’s lives adds to who they are as a person, and gives the reader an idea of how their childhoods shaped them into the people they are today.