Memoir assignment with prompts, as promised

Here's the original assignment from the syllabus, to remind you where you're headed:

Memoir, 1000 words. Due Week 4
Memory will provide the details and narrative of this piece, and the implications of Memory’s fallibility may or may not be a focus. The narrator’s memories are, indeed, the subject of the piece, and creating the “I” character on the page through recollection of one’s past is, largely, the point of memoir. Include elements of food and/or travel/place in this memoir piece.

To get the juices flowing (so to speak) on your memoir assignment, here are some possible entry points:

1. Use one of the writing exercises from class and expand it to explore food, memory and one of your places of origin.

2. After "Stealing Buddha's Dinner," write about a food obsession of yours.

3. Write about a memory of your first time with a new food, a time when you experienced a completely new flavor. What effect did it have on you?

4. Write about a longing for food that speaks to a bigger, deeper longing.

5. Write about an experience of giving up food--a particular kind of food, a particular amount, food in general--of denying yourself food.

6. Write about "site-specific" food or things you've cooked in conjunction with other activities, perhaps inspired by Jane Kramer. Or write about food you have--or would--travel for, like Bourdain and French Laundry. "I like the idea of having to travel to experience a French Laundry meal. The journey is part of the experience--or was for me--an expression of the seriousness of one's intent . . . " (251).

7. Riffing off Abby's presentation, write about food as spiritual practice or family tradition with deeper roots, meaning, implications.

These are just starting points to get you going. Feel free to write from any other place in the universe as long as it speaks to food, travel, and memory.

Whatever you write, keep an eye toward crafting scene, developing character and voice, using dialogue, allowing yourself to meander and wander into the recesses of your mind as well as inform the reader about things s/he may not be familiar with. Look to Nguyen and Bourdain for inspiration. And have fun!