Memoirs + Social Proof

I got in touch with Lisa Roylance and she sent me a copy of the paper she presented at the recent BYU English Symposium titled "The Importance of Memory Holes in Memoir." Not only will the paper itself be a great resource, but Lisa will also be great to bounce ideas off of and take advice from. Her paper is very interesting, and her list of references has a lot of sources that I think I may end up using in my final paper. I'm really excited to have found someone else researching along similar veins!

Here's a quote from the end of her paper:

"Memoir reminds me of the inevitable imperfections that I have. It brings me to more questions than answers sometimes, more spaces to look at and patches to sew. I’m the only one that can do it, though. I am the doctor looking at my past and living in my present, and both are full of mistakes. I am the patient wanting to learn and find healing from the cuts and scrapes of my past. That, I believe, is the true power of honest memoir – allowing the reader to find their own past filled with holes and “I don’t know’s” to peer at the light caught in a drop just as it dangles from the web" (Royalnce 15).