Not a Memoir: An Essay

BACKGROUND: Critics (Gilmour 2010, Rak 2013) have observed the emergence of generic norms in popular life writing in response to the publishing industry's memoir 'boom' of the past 20 years. In illness memoir, which has been one of the top three most common topics of this publishing boom (Couser 2011), these narrative conventions often take the form of an 'illness journey' that progresses toward resolution by the end of the book in the form of the author/narrator's return to health, and success as a published author. The work 'not a memoir: an essay' interrogates this narrative convention and poses the question: how can the essay be used as an alternative form for life-writing a more complex and conflicted experience of illness? CONTRIBUTION This work uses the reflexive capacity of the essay to undermine redemption narrative as a convention of illness memoir, and to propose a way of writing an unstable, uncertain, ill self. The essay form is used to explore an ill narrator who does not come back together on the page, but fractures further as the work goes on. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE This work was published in the Essay Special Edition of TEXT Journal of Writing Courses. TEXT is an international fully refereed journal published twice yearly online. The Essay Special Edition published 15 essays by writers, scholars, and creative practitioners that explored "the implications of the essay as an evolving contemporary genre in Australasia" and "its inflection in international contexts of relevance to Australasian stories and voices."