Warriors Don't Cry

            The fact that this book is a memoir has me less enthusiastic to read it. I read historical documents every day and after a while, they get boring. I have read plenty of accounts of the Jim Crow south and of the time during the Civil Rights movement. What makes this story slightly more interesting is that she is talking about her own feelings on the matter and I am able to read the story for that instead of for the historical context of the event she is talking about.

            I believe I mentioned in class that when I read a fiction story and something that is too convenient happens, I think, “well, the author wrote himself into a corner there” whereas in a memoir, I have to chalk it up to coincidences that do happen in life. It is amazing how often the events that have unfolded to reveal the present situations that we live in happened out of sheer coincidence. If one little thing had turned out differently, we would be living in a very different world. In this book, if Elizabeth had been killed while she tried to push her way past the soldiers (36), it may have derailed the integration process for more than the three years that it was pushed back. On the multiple occasions where Melba considers leaving the school, if she had, she may have started the trend that the other eight would have followed, again halting the integration process. In a fiction book, I call it convenience. In a memoir I have to be more amazed at how certain situations panned out.

            Another way in which my reading is affected by the fact that this book is a memoir is that I can actually be angry with the people in the book, but in my mind, I can’t change it. When I read fiction, if I don’t like the outcome, I will go back to the crucial point where it could have still been fixed, and I re-write the rest of the book in my head. In a non-fiction book, I cannot do that. Although I don’t like how Melba’s personal life ended up going, I know that how she writes it is actually what happened in her life. I can google “Melba Beals” and I will get the same information. The characters aren’t mine to manipulate. However, I can get angrier at the characters in a memoir than in a fiction book where I end up getting angry at the author.

            If a reader doesn’t know the caliber of the violence that engulfed the lives of many African-Americans in the south post-civil war (which has gradually gotten better, we hope), then a memoir is better than a fiction story as a learning tool. A fiction story can be brushed off. The violence and horrors can be seen as the author’s imagination. However, a memory, a person’s solid remembrances of what happened, cannot be side-stepped so easily. The reader doesn’t know nearly as much as the person who was there. A memoir forces you to open yourself up to the words of what really happened, despite personal prejudices.