Life Writing is the first English unit studied by Year 7 students when they begin their secondary education at Mount Carmel. Until recently, it was also a topic studied for the HSC by English Extension students. It appears, as never before, people want to write the story of their lives and read about the lives of others. The popularity of life writing indicates a widespread shift to the personal and a preference for ‘real’ experience encountered in autobiographies, biographies, memoirs and diaries. These texts satisfy a desire to understand one’s origins and one’s identity by returning to the scene of the past in order to discover and make sense of one’s world.

The Diary of a Young Girl is a classic life writing text. Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just three months before her 16th birthday. Anne was Jewish and before she was arrested and sent to the camp she had been hiding from the Germans, with several other people, in a secret annexe in her father’s old office building. She had kept a diary from June 12, 1942, until August 1, 1944. After her arrest on August 4, 1944, the scattered pages of her diary were collected by a sympathetic woman working in the building. They were later returned to her father, Otto Frank, after the war. After long deliberation, he decided to have her writing published. This book is a testament to the strength of the human spirit in the face of intense horror and brutality. Some entries appear below. 

Saturday June 20, 1942 

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of things off my chest.

Saturday July 11, 1942

Not being able to go outside upsets me more than I can say, and I’m terrified our hiding place will be discovered and that we’ll be shot. That, of course, is a fairly dismal prospect.

Friday, 21 July 1944

I’m finally getting optimistic. Now, at last, things are going well! They really are! Great news! An assassination attempt has been made on Hitler’s life, and for oncer not by Jewish Communists or British capitalist, but by a German general who’s not only a count, but young as well. The Führer owes his life to ‘Divine providence’: he escaped, unfortunately, with only a few minor burns and scratches. A number of officers and generals nearby were killed or wounded. The head of the conspiracy has been shot. 

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai & Christina Lamb is another life writing text which tells the inspirational story of a Pakistani schoolgirl who demonstrated remarkable courage and resilience in the face of overwhelming oppression and adversity. In 2009, young Malala began blogging about life in the Swat Valley in Pakistan during the time of the Taliban. She soon rose to prominence as an advocate for the right of girls to pursue an education, and in 2011 she remarkably survived an attempted assassination by Taliban gunmen. Malala has become a global symbol of courage and was the joint winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her ‘struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education’. In reading the book I Am Malala, students will find the description of Malala’s life, family background and school experiences, and the portrayal of the lives of Muslim women and girls in Pakistan, engaging. The power of education and the importance of having a voice are powerfully conveyed here. 

Roald Dahl’s Boy is a memoir of his childhood which contains some hilariously true stories. Students will enjoy the revenge on the disgusting sweetshop owner, Mrs Pratchett, and the unanaesthetised removal of tonsils. Dahl’s ability to capture the life and humour in an incident can provide a model for telling students’ own tales in the classroom. Roald Dahl’s autobiography still engages students because they know his books. Dahl also shares a sad childhood because his father dies and he is then sent to boarding school. In his exploits at boarding school, we can see the beginnings of a creative humour that permeates his novels. 

“My four friends and I had come across a loose floorboard at the back of the classroom, and when we prised it up with the blade of a pocket-knife, we discovered a big hollow space underneath. This, we decided, would be our secret hiding place for sweets and other small treasures… Every afternoon, when the last lesson was over, the five of us would wait until the classroom had emptied, then we would lift up the floorboard and examine our secret hoard, perhaps adding to it or taking something away. 

“One day, when we lifted it up, we found a dead mouse lying among our treasures. It was an exciting discovery. Thwaites took it out by its tail and waved it in front of our faces. ‘What shall we do with it?’ he cried. 

‘It stinks!’ someone shouted. ‘Throw it out the window quick!’

‘Hold on a tick,’ I said. ‘Don’t throw it away.’

Thwaites hesitated. Then looked at me. 

When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty. I must tell you, therefore, that it was I and I alone who had the idea for the great and daring Mouse Plot. We all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine.” 

Tim Winton’s celebration of the coastal life is beautifully depicted in his memoir Land’s Edge. 

Winton’s relationship to place and people is vividly captured, allowing the reader to enter the world of the text in all its power, passion and beauty. 

“Down on the reef at low tide the rock pools were brimming pits in the great exposed shelf. Octopus clambered about from hole to hole and startled sweep blurred away as we passed. Out at the edge of the reef where the surf clapped up against its face, the bag was handed to me and my father pulled the jarrah-slat pots up onto the limestone shelf. We snatched out the creaking, twitching crayfish, baited up again, and he heaved the traps into the deep. Now and then a big swell hit the reef edge and reared up to come charging across the platform at us as a wall of boiling foam. I stood wide-legged and side-on as I was taught, holding the waistband of his shorts, feeling the crays kick and butt the bag against my legs. The force of the water was immense and terrible. Sometimes I was blasted completely off my feet, only to feel my father’s grip anchoring me to the earth.”

Mrs Clare Murphy

English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach