It’s Personal Because It’s Family

Our second big writing project this semester was a personal essay. Luckily, I’ve been practicing this genre a bit in another class, otherwise the assignment likely would’ve felt overwhelmingly broad and un-academic. What am I arguing? And is my evidence just…me? I’ve journaled a fair amount throughout my life (mostly about supremely embarrassing things) so I have some practice putting internal thoughts and personal experiences onto paper, but what does it look like to use the personal in an essay—the purpose of which is to make some sort of point rather than to just help me process or remember? 

My chosen theme for this semester is crafting—how it’s used by different people, what’s it good for, why did so many of us turn to it during waves of lockdown? Ok, so my piece will need to be something personal of/from/to me and it will have to be craft related. I’m a moderately crafty person, but I wasn’t finding anything I’d be excited to write about until I thought about sewing in particular, the many projects I’ve watched my mom do over the years, and the stories she’s told me about her big sister teaching her. In a flurry of associations, I thought of all the craft-related things I know about my aunt—and significantly, how that’s most of what I know about her. Susie died before I was born, but through the skills she taught my mom and the physical objects she made and we’ve kept, I’ve been able to get a sense of the kind of person she was. 

We had a series of brainstorming exercises to do in class to help us come up with ideas for this project, and in that moment I had such a clear list of stories and an emotional resonance that I knew I was ready to go. I called my mom later to get a refresher on a few timeline points and to get some quotes about Susie, which doubled as a sweet moment of connecting with her about her sister. Writing this piece, I felt the duty of telling the story well as an expression of care and love. And focusing on other members of my family helped it be personal but not solely built on what’s going on in my head. I hope I was able to meet the brief and give a different sort of argument for the importance of crafts—but even more so I hope I was able to capture a piece of my family history beautifully and truthfully.