Writers and Editors

Jun 15, 2016 6:10 AM EDT

You might want to add a memoir I wrote with Josef Filipovic, who survived an enemy even more threatening to him than the Nazis--his father. Little Joe is the story of Joe’s youthful struggle to survive in occupied Holland during World War 2. Besides the Nazi oppression everyone lived under, “Josko” was also fighting a battle at home against his father, a guestworker in the Dutch coal mines close to the German border, who “was bent on destroying me,” and treated his son as an Untermensch in his own home. Fifteen year old Josko was captured by the Germans and taken to a forced labor camp at a coal mine in Germany. After surviving two years, he escaped and was picked up by an infantry unit of the American army. Adopted by the GI’s--and renamed “Little Joe”--he became a soldier fighting the Germans and began the odyssey that would end five years later in New York harbor within sight of the lights of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

- Bill Wheatley

Nov 27, 2018 9:05 AM EST

The War Stories Their Families Never Forgot (NY Times Magazine 11-9-18) The Times asked readers to share stories and memories of their relatives who had a role in World War I. Great stories, wonderful photos!

- PMcNees

Nov 28, 2018 6:41 AM EST

This is not a memoir, but it's a great story and gives the big picture from a fascinating perspective: Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy. For me, maybe the most amazing part of the story was that thousands of women came to Washington DC to participate in a project they did not know one thing about when they left home. They came in absolute secrecy and ignorance of what they would be doing: they didn't know where they were going or why, but they were willing to take a chance, partly for the adventure and partly to help their country. And they were sworn to secrecy and kept the secret! An amazing story. She has also done a young readers edition: Code Girls: The True Story of the American Women Who Secretly Broke Codes in World War II

- Pat McNees

Feb 01, 2019 8:07 PM EST

A completely different take on the Vietnam War: Long Daze at Long Binh The humorous adventures of two Wisconsin draftees trained as combat medics and sent off to set up a field hospital in South Vietnam. Very funny memoir by veterans Steve Donovan and Fred Borchardt, excellent reviews, , read all about it at www.longbinhdaze.com.

- Dan Markham

Oct 06, 2014 3:56 PM EDT

I like this paragraph from Ann Patchett's afterword to Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face: “In the right hands, a memoir is the flecks of gold panned out of a great, muddy river. A memoir is those flecks melted down into a shapable liquid that can then be molded and hammered into a single bright band to be worn on a finger, something you could point to and say, “This? Oh, this is my life.” Everyone has a muddy river, but very few have the vision, patience, and talent to turn it into something so beautiful. This is why the writer matters, so that we can not only learn from her experience but find a way to shape our own. I’m not talking about shaping every life into a work of art. I’m talking about making our life into something we can understand, a portable object that contains the weight and power of an entire terrain.”

- PM

Aug 22, 2017 8:18 AM EDT

See also The nature and malleability of memory as it affects stories and storytelling. More on the subject!

- PM

Sep 21, 2017 7:54 AM EDT

Brain Pickings, Maria Popova's intelligent, probing newsletter, has presented several essays on memory, our sense of self, life, and the arts: • Permanent Present Tense: Pioneering Scientist Suzanne Corkin on How the Famous Amnesiac H.M. Illuminates the Paradoxes of Memory and the Self (8-10-17) “Even if we will never completely understand the way the brain works, whatever small part of the truth we are able to learn will bring us one step closer to understanding who we are.” • The Psychology of Why Creative Work Hinges on Memory and Connecting the Unrelated (9-2-14)“In the course of creative endeavors, artists and scientists join fragments of knowledge into a new unity of understanding.”• Virginia Woolf on the Nature of Memory and How It Threads Our Lives Together (9-26-16)“Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither.”• The Mystery of Personal Identity: What Makes You and Your Childhood Self the Same Person Despite a Lifetime of Change (10-7-14)• Joan Didion on Keeping a Notebook (11-19-12) “We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”• Hold Still: Sally Mann on the Treachery of Memory, the Dark Side of Photography, and the Elusive Locus of the Self (11-29-16) “Photographs economize the truth; they are always moments more or less illusorily abducted from time’s continuum.” • An Illustrated Meditation on Memory and Its Imperfections, Inspired by Borges (on Cecilia Ruiz, 7-22-15)• Ongoingness: Sarah Manguso on Time, Memory, Beginnings and Endings, and the True Measure of Aliveness (3-31-15) “Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments — an inability to accept life as ongoing.”

- PM