An Introduction to the Liberal Arts
The Individual and the Community

An autobiography not only presents a true story or stories about your life but is also fictionalized to a degree.  Dreams From My Father doesn’t tell every detail of Obama's personal life nor does it cover every single day.  It focuses on making a point about his search for his identity and specifically, his relationship to his father.  True events are constructed to demonstrate a point or create a pattern.  Small details may be added or embellished to make the retelling have as much impact as the actual experience, such as in I, Rigoberta Menchu.  Autobiographies also find meaning and significance in personal experience that leads readers to reflect and learn something about the human experience.  It is about you—but not only about you.

You may write your autobiography (3 – 4 pages) as a non-fiction essay or journal.  Autobiographies are often intimate and revealing but you should not feel exposed or uncomfortable by anything that you include in your autobiography.  Personal awakenings and changes are often the focus on autobiography (witness Maya Angelo’s autobiographical works). You might focus on a specific life-altering event (avoid clichés) or cover a broader time period with a narrower focus in order to demonstrate a specific change. Create a narrative thread with a dominant focus while avoiding clichés. Your classmates will be reading and providing feedback on your autobiography.

1.   Does your essay present a well-told story?  Specifically, is your essay focused around a specific, limited event?  Is the topic narrow enough that it can be completely covered in 750-1000 words?  Does your essay use action verbs?  Is your essay clearly organized?  Does your essay convey a sense of immediacy and drama (perhaps through the use of dialogue)?  Do you create a persona with a distinctive voice?

2.   Does your essay contain a vivid presentation of the event?  Specifically, does your essay use vivid language and specific details?  Does your essay have a dominate impression (thus demonstrating a focused, main point)?  Does your essay present a significant point by showing as well as by telling?  Does your essay show or tell at the most appropriate, most effective times?  Do you provide specific details that make a point and are significant beyond the details themselves?

3.   Does your essay develop the event’s significance (what the St. Martin’s Guide also refers to as the autobiographical significance)?  Specifically, does your essay have a clear main point?  Does your essay instruct as well as entertain? 

4.   Does your essay demonstrate control over grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other formal writing conventions? 

 "The lessons we have learned about cultural codes, symbolic forms, and cognitive archeology will be found to bear with special weight on autobiography, making it one of the most sensitive registers of the idea of human existence and the pattern of individual life in a given society" (43).