Benefits of Teaching Memoir: We get noticed in newspapers like the Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune interviewed three Chicago-area memoir-writing teachers for an article they published last week called A story to tell: Memoir writing unlocks family life and times. I haven’t yet met the other two writers, but when reading the article it came as no surprise to me to learn we all have one thing in common: We all love our jobs.

Memoir classes become thick as thieves.

Virginia Gibbons, a professor at Oakton Community College who teaches classes at Chicago’s Irish American Heritage Center, points out in the article that “memoirs can be a way to understand what happened.” Cathaleen Roach, senior outreach coordinator at suburban River Forest, leads writing classes to community groups there and told the Tribune how much joy she sees during classes. “I don’t want people to be afraid of looking back.” My quote in the article advocates for taking a class rather than writing in isolation at home:

Finke’s classes run for six to eight weeks and take a break before another session begins. “A lot of the writers don’t like the break. They get so used to being with each other week after week and sharing their stories,” she says. “It’s one place you can go and people are going to listen to you.”

The best quotes came from the experts: people who take our memoir-writing classes. Bindy Bitterman, Wanda Bridgeforth, and Annelore Chapin — three writers in memoir classes I lead here in Chicago — are quoted.

Bindy takes the class I lead at a senior living center called The Admiral, and the Tribune mentions a 500-word piece she wrote for class about meeting Sen. John F. Kennedy at Oak Street Beach in 1956 (JFK was here to attend the 1956 Democratic Convention). Bindy credits memoir-writing classes for giving her the discipline to write as she’s always wanted to do. “I just enjoy it more than anything I’ve done these last years,” she says.

From there the article quotes Wanda, a writer you Safe & Sound blog readers know very well. She told the reporter that her 12 years attending memoir-writing classes has been a way to reconnect with her relatives and stay engaged in life. “It’s just helped so much,” she says. “It took the cobwebs off the brain.”

The story ends beautifully with a quote from Annelore Chapin, a writer in Wanda’s class. Annelore was a toddler when World War II was ending, and after a few weeks in class she worried her innocent stories of growing up in Germany might make Jewish women in our writing class uncomfortable. She talked to the women privately and offered to leave. Instead, the writers gave her hugs. “All of us learn about tolerance and accepting each other,” she says. “To me that’s a wonderful benefit.”