‘Starting from Memory: Playing with Personal Histories’, a workshop lead by Falmouth Lecturer Naida Redgrave
Naida Redgrave was joined by a small group of students in the Lighthouse last Friday for a relaxed workshop exploring the use of memory in writing.
In the first part of the workshop, Naida took us through her process of writing her PhD thesis, which discusses the representation of Black Muslim women in British cinema. Naida revealed how she had discovered that Muslim women protagonists are always represented in the same way in British cinema; always facing hardship and never happy. She found this was the case over all examples after viewing the first five minutes of the protagonist on screen. She found that this caused the audience to view these women in a particular, stereotyped way.
She then linked this to her own experience and how she often felt othered as a child. She recalled how she had noticed that she was the only black person in her school at one point in her life, and how this was a prominent memory for her.
By reflecting on this feeling, she realised that the most powerful memories are the most painful, but that the historic pain suffered by minority groups is often used for profit in the media. She has been looking to challenge this in her work by finding the silver-lining of even her worst memories, so that she can write a narrative which centres on joy as opposed to despair and expresses her experience in a new way.
Naida then moved onto the writing section of the workshop and asked us to find three memories to work from:
An Early Memory:
Mine was playing in my nan’s house and struggling to walk down her scary stairs with big gaps between them.
An Encounter with a pet or animal:
I remembered being terrified of my first dog when my mum brought her home as a puppy after she jumped up at me and nibbled my ears.
Memory of a good birthday:
Finally, I recalled the birthday my mum bought loads of arts and craft supplies for me and my friends to make elaborate crowns with, and we paraded around the house in them for hours.
Naida then challenged us to combine the stories to create one narrative. She purposefully did not give us much direction and encouraged us to see where our stories ended up.
The weird mix of memories, none of which were bad, nor particularly memorable, didn’t seem very inspiring at first. However, when I took a step back from the reality of the situations, and began thinking about individual aspects of the memories, a scene began to take place.
The spiral stairway was tight, and the steps had eroded away in places from misuse, so I leapt over gaps as wide as I was tall. I clamped my mother’s stolen crown to my chest as I ran and prayed that the thick tapestry covering the door to the tower would conceal my scent from the creature who was hunting it.
I was forced to a halt as the stairs stopped suddenly, the ragged edges crumbling under my weight. I could see the steps I had already climbed spiralling down below. I shifted the heavy crown from one sweaty hand to the other and looked upwards to the next intact stair. It was above my head and completely out of reach.
There was a smash behind me, and a wet snarl wafted up the tower. The creature’s warm breath caressed the back of my calves. I closed my eyes as I heard it sniff the air with a deep, crackling inhale. Then it began to climb the stairs, it’s body scraping against the walls of the tower.
I had no choice but to watch through the gap at my feet as the creature appeared in the stairway below me. Its face was wide, with a square jaw, leaking thick saliva which dribbled from two sharp canine teeth. Two black eyes sat in its bloodied, dog-like face.
This little scene is not the sort of thing I usually write, and is by no means by best writing, but I found the use of memories helpful for creating a story on the spot and stepping outside of my comfort zone. It is not representative of my own experience, however, was fun to create and write, and I can see how experimenting with memories could change your perspective on a particular personal experience.
One of my favourite parts of the workshop was how everyone combined their memories in such different ways. Some people used them to create a single, realistic scene that never actually happened, others created poems using different aspect of their memories. I really enjoyed listening to the variation of different writing styles and outcomes.
The workshop reminded me how easy it is to take inspiration from my own life, to make something ordinary and reshape it how I want. It was a cosy and creative way to finish this term.
Words by Alicia Burden