Let’s focus on a forgotten method of research which you might use for writing your story. Someone has possibly SAVED your letters. I’m talking about the ones you wrote to Mom when you took the summer trip to Spain or the month exploration into the heart of Ecuador.
My mother and aunt cleaned house recently, finding stacks and stacks of letters which have come back to me. I’m afraid to read them for several reasons.
One. I know I will sound melo-dramatic in many of the letters. The summer I spend in Haiti was when I was only 19 years old. Need I say more?
Two. I will get sentimental and won’t be able to look at them objectively.
Three. To read them is to wake up memories. The pathos between the lines, the memories conjured up just by airing them decades later will be so thick in the air, that the pain can only be relieved by being written again.
Ah, the angst of memoir.
And then again, aren’t my letters valid as proof for statements I make when I write my life story?
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Continue Module 5, Research & Presenting Evidence: How to handle foreign words and foods
