A White House DiaryLady Bird Johnson

•Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses.

•—W. Somerset Maugham

What is nonfiction?

•Nonfiction is writing about real:• lives •places • things •events • ideas

What are the most popular forms of nonfiction?•The most popular forms of nonfiction are:•biographies • autobiographies•memoirs• essays• speeches• informational text

What are your favorite types of nonfiction?• Biographies• Self-help books•Autobiographies•Newspaper, magazine,

and Internet articles• Eyewitness accounts of

newsworthy events• Essays•Memoirs

What are the purposes of nonfiction?• To teach readers by providing information,

explanation, or instruction•Also:• To offer readers advice• To present snapshots of different life

experiences for readers• To entertain readers• To persuade readers to understand a

particular viewpoint

Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir

Biography

• the story of a person’s life told by another person

What do you think?

1. Why do you think biographies are such a popular form of nonfiction?

Biography is history seen through the prism of a person.

—Louis Fischer

2. How do biographies provide insight into history?

3. Aside from fame, what characteristics or life experiences might make a person an interesting subject of a biography?

Where do writers get their information? • Primary Sources – First hand!• building blocks to create stories from the past. • Primary sources are created at the time of an event,

or very soon after something has happened. • These sources are often rare or one-of-a-kind.

However, some primary sources can also exist in many copies, if they were popular and widely available at the time that they were created.

Primary Sources

• Examples of primary sources include• letters• diaries/journals• interviews• photographs• films• artwork• autobiographies• business papers• court documents

Where do writers get their information? Secondary Sources - Second Hand!• called secondary sources because they are

created after primary sources • often use or talk about primary sources• can give additional opinions (sometimes called

bias) on a past event or on a primary sources• often have many copies, found in libraries,

schools or homes.

Secondary Sources

• Examples of secondary sources include• interviews• other biographies• specialized dictionaries• encyclopedias• textbooks• newspaper and magazine

articles

Example of Biography

• To write the biography of Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, author Walter Dean Myers used both primary and secondary sources.

What do you think?• What types of primary and secondary sources

might Myers have drawn from in writing the passage on the next slide?

Example of Biography

Ibrahima was inspected on the shore, then put into irons and herded into a small boat that took him out to a ship that was larger than any he had ever seen.

The ship onto which Ibrahima was taken was already crowded with black captives. Some shook in fear; others, still tied, fought by hurling their bodies at their captors. The beating and the killing continued until the ones who were left knew that their lot was hopeless.

—from “Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima,”by Walter Dean Myers

Autobiography and Memoir

• An autobiography is the story of a person’s life, written by that person.• This written account includes all or most of the

significant experiences of the individual’s life.• A memoir is also the story of a person’s life,

written by that person.• This written account extracts and focuses on

one or more significant experiences of the individual’s life.

Organization of Autobiography and Memoir• Like biographies, autobiographies typically follow

chronological order.• Memoirs, however, may have less structured

organizations. They often use:• flashbacks, which interrupt time sequence and present

events that occurred earlier or in the past

and• foreshadowing, which provides a clue to events that

will occur in the future or later in the story

Example of AutobiographyMy roots in New Mexico go back for centuries—

espanoles arriving in the 17th century to indios parientes already there. The move to Texas happened between 1848 and 1865 (a few wars got in the way, causing strange demographic reshuffles). My great-great-grandmother was already there, and had a seamstress shop in “downtown” San Antonio; my great-grandmother washed clothes in the San Antonio River…. She later married two (one at a time) Confederate veterans.

—from “Mi Familia,”by Carmen Tafolla

Example of Memoir

• “My family had never had a Christmas tree, but I remembered how once I had helped Papi wind colored lights around the eggplant bush that divided our land from Doña Ana’s. We started at the bottom and wound the wire with tiny red bulbs around and around until we ran out; then Papi plugged another cord to it and we kept going until the branches hung heavy with light and the bush looked like it was on fire”

– From “When I was Puerto Rican” by Esmeralda Santiago

SUMMARY: Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir•Whether they are reading a biography, an

autobiography, or a memoir, readers can• find out more about a person’s life• learn more about a person’s character• gain insight into themselves

and the world around them

We are reading:

• An excerpt from A White House Diary by Lady Bird Johnson• Memoir• Personal account of what happened in the White

House• Married to Lyndon B. Johnson (Vice president

1961-1963, President 1963-1969)

JFK Assassination• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i67x1I2znlQ• http://www.history.com/videos/john-f-kennedy-assassinated#

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