An Artist's Rendition
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The memoir is a very special type of literature. It is not as complete as an autobiography in that it focuses on a certain period of the writer’s life. The memoir is also not a day-by-day explanation a persons experience, rather it centers on the people and relations of the people in the author’s life. It is a strange bird, the memoir, which demands a lot of honesty from the writer and exclusiveness as to what should be discussed. Debra Dickerson’s An American Story is a book that tries to fit into this little niche, and though at times is capable at arriving there, many times falls short.

Dickerson’s memoir shows her fight out of the lower class in the ghettos of St. Louis. Most interestingly she divides the story into two parts: the Personal and the Political. The personal is a recollection of her young life, the harshness of life in St. Louis and her large Baptist family. She describes how her family was broke down because of her father, a person who could hate, became overly abusive and the only choice for her mother was moving to safe house (7). Her life continues with new struggles in a single parent household and her ever-increasing addiction to books and knowledge, which helps her escape an ever-darker reality, and eventually leads her to believe in education as an escape.

It is here, as Dickerson describes life as a girl in the ghetto of St. Louis, that her book truly reaches a memoir status, not because she talks about her hardships growing up - which seems to be a very common theme for memoirs - but rather because of her honesty, truthfulness and concentration on specific events.

William Zinsser believes that it is these characteristics - honesty and truthfulness - that represent the memoir at its best (5). In a great memoir the pain of the past is elevated with forgiveness because the writers are as honest about their own young selves as they are about the sins of the elders (5). To Zinsser, such a memoir is written with love and is seen in the first part of Dickerson’s memoir, as she is honest about the violence and pain she experienced (5). As her family began to fall apart she notes, my father must have felt minimized and second-guessed at every turn-especially by me and the timid wife who turned out to be every bit as capable as he was (41). Here we Dickerson is being honest about both her father’s later abusiveness and her role in prodding his aggressiveness. Another time Dickerson shows honesty not only to herself, but others, when she describes an argument between herself and a college professor she did not respect. Dickerson writes, ‘There’s a name for that kind of thinking, Mrs. Dickerson,’ Mr. Smith said ominously, and paused for dramatic effect. ‘Naïve realism’ (75). Yet instead of insulting him, or berating him, she notes he was right. I am a naïve realist (75).

Along with honesty a good memoir should also be well focused. In the first part of Dickerson’s memoir there is a noticeable emotional cohesion and planned feeling. Jill Ker Conway noticed this focus when writing her memoirs; she states that there has to be a necessary detachment because it takes time to know what the shape of your life has been like (59). Early in the story, Dickerson, explaining and describing her father and her family’s position, recalls a story of a trip where after an accident her family started looking for a Laundromat:

I read aloud every sign we passed. Miserable I certainly was, but I still needed to be the first to find the Laundromat.
”Bakery.’ ‘Joe’s Auto Body.’ ‘Benjamin Franklin.’ Hey, There it is, ‘Wash-a-teria.’ Daddy. Daddy?’
He and Mama exchanged looks. The car never slowed.
‘Whites only. What that mean?’ No one answered. ‘Aint we gon stop?’ Still nothing.
Then, I got it. Our clothes were colored, not white. Had we used that place, our clothes would have faded (24).

Dickerson shows the confusion she felt and explains feelings well while still remaining simple. This to the point yet explained recollection of Dickerson’s childhood is lacking later in the book.

Part two of the book, the Political, is a dramatic change from the warmth and acceptance of the first part. Here Dickerson discusses her life from her beginnings in the Air Force as an airman and continuing with her encounters in Korea and return to college. She finishes with her graduation of Harvard Law School after a realization that Air Force life no longer suited her. It drags. She clearly shows many of the problems memoir writers have when writing a memoir, how much of the self to include, and what to write about.

At times it seems as if Dickerson’s her memoir stretches over too much of her life. A more comprehensive story of her childhood to her twenties would have made the memoir more cohesive and less self-centered. Following Conway’s thought on the spacing between the writer and the events of the memoir indeed, Dickerson is cohesive and well detached from the events up through her twenties. Only in her later twenties does Dickerson need to discuss events and digress. Something that would have been unnecessary for her had she waited longer to complete her work.

This lack of focus is better seen with the memoir’s increased selfishness. But how can memoirs be selfish? Even though they are the story of a person, there is also a matter of what to write about the person. Annie Dillard discusses this problem in memoirs by explaining the things she left out her own memoir, the personal pronoun can be the subject of the verb […] but not the object of the verb: ‘I analyze me, I discuss me, I describe me, I quote me’ (154). This is the problem Dickerson faces as the book progresses. She no longer shows the reader her life and explains why it happens, but instead she goes in deeper and includes herself too much. Indeed there are many passages in which Dickerson only analyzes and discusses herself.

For example, when Dickerson starts thinking about leaving the Air Force, she goes into long paragraphs on her inner dispute of the issue. Only after discussing it for four paragraphs does she explain, Thinking about leaving […] was terrifying. I scrambled for ways to bind myself more firmly to it (199). The problem is not that she converses on this one occasion, but rather that it happens so often in the later parts of the book. She discusses many times what her new goal would be after her military life. At one point she talks about how consumed with the plight of the working class and possibly setting her life to fight for that cause (186). It is only until several pages of talk that the idea to create a venue wherein neighborhood blacks could substantially improve their lives (229) becomes apparent to her. Although at times her views and thoughts do become interesting, the consistency of such long discussions suddenly becomes overwhelming; as if hanging on the readers arm, like a drunk, and say[ing], ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting’ (Dillard 154).

Dickerson’s memoir is rather contradictory. While her first part, the Personal, corresponds to what a memoir should be. Though she is honest throughout, the Personal shows a greater honesty and forgiveness then the rest of the book, it is also more focused and cohesiveness. In contrast, the second part of her memoir, the Political, is less cohesive as it become more selfish and whiny. Overall the story was great, though somewhat common surviving the odds story. As memoir however, An American Story cannot be described to be great, even though at many times it is forgiving and warm, far too much of it is selfish discussion. Dickerson’s memoir isn’t capable of achieving the little niche of a great memoir.

Works Cited

Conway, Jill Ker. “Points of Departure.” Zinsser 41 - 60.

Dickerson, Debra J. An American Story. New York: Pantheon Books. 2000.

Dillard, Annie. “The Past Breaks Out.” Zinsser 141 - 162.

Zinsser, William. “Introduction.” Zinsser 141 - 162.

Zinsser, William, ed. Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.