Types of Autobiography
Sharing the most exciting moments of your life with family and friends is a great idea. To make it sound like a real story, you can write an Autobiography. Writing an autobiography is an excellent idea because it allows you to share your life inspiration with the generations to come. Remember, any person can write an autobiography regardless of their background.
Autobiography and memoir are closely related though they refer to a different colossal. Some people may decide to write a memoir due to their taste in writing, while others report only to share part of their life with the next generation. An autobiography usually talks about an entire life, while a memoir covers part of a person’s life.
When writing an autobiography, regardless of the type you have chosen, the readers need to find something nurturing and educational in your content. Writing an autobiography is not as easy as many people may think. It would help organize yourself since you are writing a real-life story. Don’t confuse Autobiography and biography because biography is a person’s story but written by someone else.
Different reasons make people decide to write an autobiography. Some may write their autobiography stories due to various achievements or other challenges they experienced in their lives. Furthermore, people who have gone through traumatic life experiences and achieved higher limits in the limelight are significant autobiography writers.
Benefits of Autobiography
Autobiography helps to create a legacy for our future generation. Legacy is a significant part of a person’s well-lived life. We should leave behind a good legacy that the generations can emulate.
Autobiography helps people to take their positions in history. Any person who existed on the earth has their place in history. When you die, people forget about your physical nature on earth, but your legacy will forever live to be remembered in history.
It is significant in understanding a person’s life journey. Life experiences have a lot of strengths and weaknesses. By reading an autobiography, we realize the real journey of knowledge a particular author went through.
Autobiography helps to make new contacts. A self-written and published autobiography enhances public exposure. This exposure attracts a more interested audience and readers, leading to new contacts of people. Through this contact bonding, the author gains popular status within the society.
What is an Autobiography?
An autobiography is a written account of a person’s life story by the same person. Autobiographies can be written in different forms, such as fictional tales, novels, or stories that outline the writer’s real life. It implies that autobiographies are the author’s thoughts and real-life experiences. Writing an autobiography is significant because it enables the writer to communicate directly to the readers by sharing the strengths and weaknesses in life, lessons taught from life experiences for them to emulate, and get motivations. It allows the author to leave behind a positive legacy that will help to nurture and motivate future generations.
Autobiographies act as a linkage between groups of people with age differences and backgrounds. It also forms a strong interconnection between the old and new generations.
Inspiring Examples of Autobiography
“Pour Your Heart into It” by Howard Schultz.
In his Autobiography, Howard Schultz, a former company CEO, outlines his firm experience in growing the coffee company and expanding its culture to the current status.
“I Am Malala” by Malala Yousafzai
He was an advocate from Pakistan. In his Autobiography, he was an activist fighting for girls’ fundamental education rights.
Kitchen Confidential by Antony Bourdain
He is remembered as the founder and manager of various top restaurants in New York City in his account. He taught society about the secrets of kitchen chefs.
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
In this account, Mandela expressed his life experience from early childhood to the decades he spent almost three years in prison. This account story was published in 1994 after Mandela was sworn in as the president.
Types of Autobiography
There are various types of autobiographies, serving different purposes and written for other reasons. The kind of choice you make depends on the information you want to share with your readers.
Full Autobiography
Full Autobiography incorporates the full account life story of a person, from the period of birth to the present lifetime. People who choose to write their full Autobiography have entirely found their life stories different from others.
Readers can know more about the author’s kind of person by reading the inside personal story of this kind of Autobiography. An excellent example of a full autobiography is Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography written by the founding fathers of the United States of America.
Memoir
A memoir gives an account of stories about a specified place, time, or a person’s relationship. These stories are written in the first person who is the principal author. Memoirs are less limited to details than a full autobiography because it gives an account of stories about a particular part of a person’s life.
The memoir can be about a person’s childhood life experience or a relationship that helps to shape someone’s life. An excellent famous memoir example is Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.
Personal Essay
It’s the most traditional form of autobiography writing. It is featured to be artistic and intimate compared to other types of autobiography writing. Personal Essays focus more on the tone and literary style of the author’s story rather than the story itself.
The story needs to be expressed in terms of the author’s emotions, thoughts, and personal resilience for the readers to get the innermost understanding of the writer.
The best example of a personal essay is “A Natural History of the Senses” by Diane Ackerman.
Confession
Confession is the type of Autobiography written by individuals who have done something wrong to the societies. They write confessions to teach their readers about the dangers of what they did. The organization can learn lessons from these immoral doing practices of the writers.
The authors look for comfort and sympathy in writing about their wrongdoings, hoping that society will gain moral teachings from their actions. An example of a Confession autobiography is the one written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Psychological Illness
People who have experienced certain mental disorders have written psychological Illness autobiographies. They decide on sharing their thoughts about their mental illness experiences with readers. Though different groups of specialists can help people with mental disorders, some have found it more relieving to share their experiences through writing.
People who have this mental illness take it as an advantage to seek medical assistance and financial support from society by writing this kind of Autobiography. This kind of writing is more significant because it helps to expose a person’s mental health status for further medical assistance.
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang is an example of a Psychological Illness autobiography.
Overcoming Adversity
People live different kinds of lives depending on their standards. Some cannot live a satisfying life due to various natural and physical discomforts. They have gone through terrible situations such as accidents, kidnappings, and even murder. Sharing this occurrence with family and friends is an excellent idea since it will create good inspiration and motivation for others. It will also help heal and revive their internal emotions from these traumatic experiences.
An example of overcoming Adversity autobiography is The Center of the Universe by Nancy Bachrach.
Types of Autobiography in Literature
In literature, Autobiography is divided into various categories depending on their sharing stories.
Thematic
It is the type of Autobiography where the author recounts a particular subject. It may also account for other issues outside the subject. The primary purpose of a thematic Autobiography is to inform the readers about a certain predetermined suggestion point.
Religious/Spiritual Autobiography
It is an account of events and experiences written by someone who wants to share their relationship with God. The authors of religious autobiographies go through accounts of events that reveal an amount of salvation existing between humankind and God.
An excellent example of a religious Autobiography is The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton.
Intellectual
Intellectual Autobiography reflects on the individual’s life by identifying significant experiences that lead to a person’s career choice. Here, the general readers are interested to learn about the experiences that shaped the author’s career choice of life. Intellectual Autobiography accounts for the real-life events that groomed the author’s academic journey in life.
Fictional
The fictional Autobiography describes the truthful life story of the writer’s experience. Within this Autobiography, some sections of the report can be hidden to protect the real identity of the characters concerned. The author can alter the actual events, and the account of stories within a fictional autobiography can be altered for artistic reasons by the author.
Final Verdict
As an essential literary function, Autobiography has led to more positive results within the societies of today. We learned about many different life experiences by reading the above types of autobiographies. The cultures of today should adopt the skills of writing an autobiography and emulate the knowledge shared by various authors for their future well-being.
