Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: The Synecdoche

Every writer of personal nonfiction knows that ultimately the story isn't about them: it's about something larger, perhaps universal, and their personal story is merely a means to that end. The key to this paradox is the synecdoche, or the part that stands for the whole. The universe in a grain of sand, the one story that tells many people's story. Anne Fadiman did it in_The Spirit Catches You and Then You Fall Down, her book about a Hmong immigrant in the United States. So did Joan Didion, in_Where I Was From; by telling the story of her family, she told the story of California, and by telling the story of California she told the story of the West and thus of America. Rian Malan did the same for South Africa in _My Traitor's Heart: by telling the story of his family he told the story of Apartheid, and thus of our segregated world. We'll look at how these and other writers locate the universal in their particulars, and discuss how to apply their example to your own writing._