I'm beginning to feel like I belong at St. Thomas High. That's because it's my third year visiting the Pointe-Claire high school. Today, I worked with four groups of Grade Nine students. You can meet some students from one of my morning groups in the top pic. From left to right, there's Amabel (cool name, no? I'll add it to my list of possible names to use in upcoming books!), Stephanie, Stefanie and Allison.
The Grades Nines are all reading The Glass Castle, a powerful memoir by Jeannette Walls. So I designed some of my talks today to look at the memoir form. We talked about the connection between memory and memoir -- I told students that writers tend to draw on their own sensory memories, even when they are not writing memoirs!
Mr. Katz's class has been studying the Holocaust and so, for that group, I focused on my book What World Is Left -- which is a work of fiction based on my mum's experience in a Nazi concentration camp. I told the students that for me, fiction is a way of GETTING AT THE TRUTH. I know it's an odd concept, but I think they got it!
My sessions were 45 minutes long, so there wasn't much time for writing -- except with one group and I must say they came up with some interesting material. I asked students to remember a moment when they felt they were no longer kids, but had begun to enter the world of adulthood. A student named Evelyn took a lovely, creative approach: she wrote about a moment when an older woman treated her differently, subtly acknowledging she was no longer a child.
By the time my fourth session started, I'd kind of lost track of what I'd said to whom! But that last group of students saved me -- that's because they had so many good questions, and so my talk was part lecture and part just-good-conversation. Joe wanted to know the difference between memoir and autobiography. I admitted I was kind of stumped -- autobiography tends more to be the full picture of a life from beginning to end, and it's often a kind of "authorized" version; memoirs tend to be grittier and have a narrower focus. I promised Joe that by Tuesday, when I return to St. Thomas for a second visit, I'll see if I can come up with an even better answer!
A special treat for me was staying for lunch in the library, where I said I'd be around to take more questions or to look at students' writing. I knew some of the students from my previous visits -- so that made this writer feel very good (we writers like "return" readers and writers!!)
Stephanie (not the one in the picture above) talked about her grandmother who grew up in Nazi Germany. Stephanie, you've got to get your oma's story -- just like I had to get my mum's. Alyssa wanted to know how to begin a book. I told her I had the perfect answer: Just begin!! Also, I told her to come up with interesting characters (for instance, two people who are quite different), to put them in an interesting situation, and to use dialogue.
If you're wondering about what's going on in the next pic -- I'm shaking hands with Chris (another return reader and writer!) who is a leftie... so he's giving me his left hand. I don't think I've ever shaken a left hand before, so we decided to record the moment!
And in this very last pic, you'll see Chris again, this time with Alexandra and Mr. Katz.
Well that's it for today's blog entry. I'll be back in St. Thomas early Tuesday morning. I'm already looking forward to it! Special thanks to the very kind Mrs. Pye for inviting me back -- and for supplying snacks and the most delicious water ever!!