Gather together in my name By Maya Angelou

Analytical Review of a Memoir or Autobiography

Length& Works Cited Page: 4 pages typed and double-spaced in 12-pt font, printed on 1-side of each page…plus an additional Works Cited page that at the least has an MLA-style entry for the book you are writing about. Please go to Purdue University’s OWL (Online Writer’s Laboratory) for information about how to create an MLA Works Cited page, if you don’t have a college writer’s handbook, which will also have this information. Your Works Cited page should also contain entries for any other work you mention, quote from, or otherwise write about.

Give your paper a title and subtitle (as I modeled in class several sessions ago). The main title is one that you make up; the subtitle provides the title and author of the book you are writing about. Here’s an example:
From Poverty to the Riches of the Written Word:
Russell Baker’s Growing Up

(Don’t underline or use bold where your own title is concerned.)

Proofread your final draft carefully to find and fix any errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Put the names of full-length books in italics and the names of short pieces (such as the memoir excerpts) in quotation marks.

Staple your paper in the upper left-hand corner.

Contents of Paper:Although there is no one set way to structure this paper (and we did go over this several times during our campus sessions), I will list here the elements that are absolute requirements as well as suggestions for other elements.

Absolute Required Elements:
Title and author of the book you have chosen (and perhaps when it was written)
·         Brief summary of the book (but not a complete retelling)
·         Evaluation of the book as a memoir/autobiography: Do you see it as a successful memoir/autobiography? Consider whether you get a sense of who this person is/was, etc. Is the author skillful at providing a sense of place and the characteristics/personalities of the other people in the author’s life?
·         Comment on the author’s style of writing, use of description, dialogue, etc. (whichever elements are applicable).
·         Make any comparisons you can to one or two other memoir excerpts (or the full-length Wolff memoir) that we read.
·         Personal response: What did you like or dislike about this book? Would you recommend it and to whom?
·         Include approximately 4-5 brief quotes from the book and be sure to use proper MLA in-text parenthetical citations to provide page numbers). Go to the Purdue OWL website or to a college writer’s handbook to learn how to do this if you don’t know.

Optional (While the following elements are not absolutely required, they can help you lengthen your paper:
·         Make a connection to your own life/experience(s).
·         Look up the author to find out more about him/her, and make any connections you can between what you find out and what’s in the memoir.
·         Look up one or more review of this book and compare what the review says to what you think about the book.
·         Discuss a person in the book (other than the author) who stands out for you.
·         Make any connections you can between the events or other elements of the book and the time in which it was written.