Margot’s “forbidden” artwork
For my memoir paper, I chose a different topic than my studio memoir and instead focused on an event that happened my senior year in high school that shaped my views on art and censorship.
To briefly summarize the topic of my paper, I wrote about the time that my classmate, Margot, was censored by the administration at my strict Catholic high school and banned from displaying the art she made of the naked figure. This censorship caused our small group of artists to rebel and spread Margot’s story and work around the school. I ended my paper by reflecting on how my senior art class didn’t teach me how to make art, but rather how to defend it and rebel against unfair censorship. I landed on this topic after writing a long list of events in my life, small and large, that are significant to me. This topic seemed to be just right.
I didn’t realize this last point until I wrote this memoir. Through the assignment, a part of my identity was revealed. Overall, I believe I met the requirements for this assignment, however; the topic is still fresh since it only happened last year and parts of my essay were more emotionally charged than others. If I could change anything, I would try to write from a more rational “outsider” perspective instead of my own, since I was so deeply entrenched in what had happened and wrote from an emotional place.
Shortly after turning in the memoir essays, the class read Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids and I felt as if this excerpt should have been a reading during the memoir unit. This reading would have much better informed my memoir as opposed to my peer to peer essay, the unit in which we read this excerpt.
