For the last fifteen years, I have struggled to understand how domestic abuse affects later pursuits of literacy outside and inside the university. This research, which is synthesized herein, compels me to make a particular argument about the composition instruction of first-year college students: the generic memoir assignment should never be assigned. I do not use the word never lightly; however, I am arguing neither against all memoir writing, nor against all memoir writing within college-level intensive writing classes. The argument in this paper is specifically against asking first-year composition students to write a descriptive narrative about a significant life event.
I consider myself an activist teacher deeply committed to the success of all students, especially students deemed underprepared for college writing. Though this activism developed early for me, the fire was banked during the long night of an abusive marriage after a teen pregnancy over thirty years ago—only to be reignited when I sought support from the Center for Nonviolence much later during another, happy, marriage. Moreover, my argument against assigning the memoir or significant life event paper stems directly from my experiences both in the support groups and in the creative writing classes I taught for women at the Center. I see these women as similarly capable and vulnerable as the first-year students I see in my composition classrooms and in the Writing Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, a regional, mostly commuter, campus with approximately 12,000 full-time and part-time students.