How to writer a memoir, asks Nadia Kamies, author of Off-Centre and Out of Focus: ‘Go with your whole heart . . .’
Perhaps it’s ageing that invites introspection. Having a teenage son and daughter who were supposed to be growing up in a “new” post-apartheid South Africa was my motivation for wanting to reflect on how I grew up in the old one. We had been urged to embrace the “rainbow nation” after the first democratic elections in 1994 and to just get on with it. Just like that. Just turn the page.
There were many conversations that we should have been happening but were not, and incidences of racism made the news time and again. As an introvert, I felt more comfortable with sharing through writing. Journalling has always been my way of making sense of the world and, growing up in Cape Town in the 1970s and 1980s, meant that there was a lot to make sense of! I had also been raised with the mantra that education was something that the apartheid government could not take away from me, and so it was natural that I would go back to university, aged 50, to do a master’s in creative writing. I had this grand idea to write about how I had been influenced by the women in my family. My maternal grandmother was born during WWI, my mother was born a few years before apartheid was legislated, and my daughter was born on the eve of democracy, and I bridge these periods, having lived half my life under apartheid before voting in the first democratic elections in 1994.
Family Photographs
I soon realized how little I knew about the conditions that had shaped those who came before me and, somehow, the masters turned into a doctorate in History as I hungrily soaked up the history that had been carefully controlled by the apartheid state when I was at school. Frustrated by the lack of information in the official archives, I examined family photographs, interviewed my parents and other family members and friends, and completed my thesis drawing on oral history and the images and ordinary objects that had been passed down in families.
When my father died of COVID at the beginning of 2021, I was in a post-doctoral position at the university. I realised that contrary to my initial motivation, the stories of segregation and forced removals he shared with me were still sitting on the shelf in the university library and accessible to very few. Where were the conversations I had hoped to start? Writing became a way for me to process my grief amid the denial of the opportunity to bury him properly because of lockdown restrictions. I steadily chipped away at the academic phrases in my thesis, allowing the writing to breathe and the human stories to emerge. In collaboration with the university and an outside publisher, my memoir was published in South Africa.
I’m not saying that you need to go to university to write a memoir but do learn as much as you can about your subject, talk to different people, and gather information from photos and other objects. My grandmother’s crocheted doilies and the scarf that she wore when she returned from pilgrimage in 1965 became an unlikely recurring thread in my writing.
Write from where you are
Write from where you are. Perhaps it’s a habit from my journalling that I start with where I am and what is happening to me. It helps me to keep in mind the relevance of what I am doing and how yesterday impacts today.
Go with your whole heart. Think about why you are doing this work. In my case it was for my children, my parents and grandparents, but mostly for me as I tried to make sense of who I was and where I belonged in a democratic country trying to shake off its oppressive past.
Follow the process. Go where the road leads so that you can write the best story that you can. I went from health sciences (occupational therapy) through English to the History department – a process that surprises even me when I think about it.
Do it anyway!
Feel the fear and do it anyway. Imposter syndrome reared its head time and again as I second-guessed my competence, but here’s the thing, my book is about my experience, about saying this is how it was for me. What was it like for you?
When my book was launched into the world, I discovered the difference between being a writer and an author. It turns out that when you’ve written a book people want you to talk about it! The conversations that started and have continued across generations and the connections that have been made have been more than I hoped for. I have learned so much along the way and there’s so much more still to learn (luckily, I am a bit of a nerd!). I am still an introvert too, but I have overcome my aversion to public speaking (well, just a little) and, once the conversation gets going, it’s coming from my heart because no one knows my story better than I do.
(c) Nadia Kamies
https://www.anarchiveoftheordinary.org
About Off-Centre and Out of Focus: Growing up ‘coloured’ in South Africa
Nadia Kamies has written a profound and moving meditation on what it meant to grow up ‘coloured’ in South Africa under apartheid. The photographs from family albums that gave rise to this project not only represent the aspirations of the families and community about whom Kamies is writing, but are also repositories of memories weighted equally with joy and sorrow. Kamies mines these images for their secrets, showing them to be a record of the past and a promise of what the future might be.
Order your copy online here.
And read more on writing a memoir on Writiing.ie here.
