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Abstract
Personal memoirs and life histories are forms of qualitative research that from time to time appear on bestsellers lists. These forms of research detail the authors’ experiences of living and reflecting upon their everyday lives—lives that may be unique in some sense or lives made unique by the richness of the interplay of living, reflecting, and writing. In this review, I make the case for viewing moments in all lives as worthy of the development of personal memoir or life history and for using memoir as a way of generating takeaways or lessons learned. I review Elyn Saks’ (2007) memoir and bestseller about her life with schizophrenia, The Center Cannot Hold, and the British actor, author, and comedian, Stephen Fry’s 2006 documentary about bipolar disorder Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive. Both are examples of life histories that provide an abundance of opportunities for learning about what we might otherwise never know.
Keywords
Personal Memoir, Life History, Lessons Learned
Publication Date
12-1-2008
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
DOI
10.46743/2160-3715/2008.2814
Recommended APA Citation
Duffy, M. (2008). No-Drama Obama: Personal Memoirs, Bestsellers, and Qualitative Research: A Review. The Qualitative Report, 13(3), 44-48. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2008.2814
Included in
Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, Social Statistics Commons
Comments
Original volume and issue number from The Qualitative Weekly, an offshoot publication of The Qualitative Report which has been folded into the primary journal: Volume 1, Issue 9