Writing Bridges: Memoirs Potential for Community Building

Abstract

This article shows how sharing stories through memoir writing has the potential for fostering community, connecting with others who have similar stories, and for building bridges across difference. Using the notion of realization, I argue that the memoirs written by Mary Crow Dog, Kathleen B. Jones, Daphne Scholinski, and Lauren Slater make evident the bridge building potential of memoir. The stories told in memoir have transformative potential in that they merge the shared and unique, thus building bridges between individuals in a way that accounts for both similarity and difference. Community building projects can result from two things: seeing the self reflected in memoir and learning about difference through reading memoir. This article also explores the ways memoirists engage the reader in the process of writing, thus breaking apart the notion that writing and reading are solitary acts.