8.2–Nonfiction Genres

As other chapters have pointed out, genres provide writers with structural templates and conventions that they can choose to adhere to or deviate from. Most readers are familiar with genre conventions and structures, and come to expect that writers will decide either to follow them or break them creatively. These decisions are the first indicator that nonfiction writers must make creative choices, just as fiction writers do. Here are some of the more prevalent genres in nonfiction.

Autobiographies & Memoirs

While most people are aware that autobiographies and memoirs are nonfiction texts that focus on the author’s life, these words are not inherently interchangeable; instead, they represent an important creative choice that the writer made regarding what to emphasize in their life and how to structure it.

An autobiography always covers the entirety of the author’s life, from birth until the present day. This focus entails a chronological structure, and also predisposes the writer to frame every phase of their life as thematically significant for one reason or another. An author’s decision to cover the full extent of their life might suggest a desire to appear authentic to their audience (i.e. by not simply providing a highlight reel of their biggest accomplishments). It could also indicate that the author wants to contextualize their greatest or most famous accomplishments, so that the reader can see the struggles they endured or the formative moments they went through to get to their current status. Further still, the full scope of the author’s life might call attention to a part of themselves that’s less well-known but that they want their audience to understand. An autobiography can also be an author’s attempt to take stock of their lives and form a narrative from it. Any and all of these motivations can inform the author’s decision to write an autobiography.

Memoirs, by contrast, differ in that they only focus on a select part of an author’s life. This narrower focus could be because the author wants to focus on a particularly formative or famous (or infamous) experience in their life. Some memoirs, like David Sedaris’s works, are collections of memories, with each chapter covering an experience that ties to a larger theme about the author as a person or their outlook on life. Whether an author chooses to frame their life in an autobiography or a memoir, and regardless of their approach to either genre or their motive in crafting their text, none of these choices alter the fact that the author is focusing on real events (or at least their perception of them). As concrete and limited as nonfiction may appear in comparison to fiction, there is still quite a range of creative possibilities in this one genre.

Biographies

Though the focus of a biography is identical to that of an autobiography in that it is an account of someone’s life, biographies differ in that the author is writing about someone else’s life, and this entails an entirely different array of creative choices. To begin with, a famous person or historical figure often has multiple biographies written about them over long stretches of time, so a biographical author must focus on research in order to avoid libel and potential litigation. They also must establish their work as definitive or unique in comparison to other biographies.

For example, let’s say an author decides to write a biography about Robert E. Lee. Is the biography going to focus largely on his military career during the Civil War (as most Lee biographies do)? Will it focus on earlier times in his life (his childhood, time at West Point, the Mexican-American War), or during Reconstruction? Will it focus on more negative aspects of his legacy, such as his white supremacist beliefs and treatment of the enslaved Black Americans he owned? Will it review and critique prior biographies on Lee, or will it focus on new historical evidence? The author’s answers to these questions will have the largest impact on how they craft this nonfiction text.

Essays

Similar to fictional works of literature, many nonfiction essays address themes of social, historical, and cultural identity and character. Unlike fictional works, which often explore these ideas through allegory or characters, essays give authors the ability to address readers more directly, frame contemporary issues in a variety of aspects (from ironic satire to direct calls to action), and also craft a mutual collective identity with the readers whom these writers want to reach. For example, two prominent authors of fiction, Dorothy Parker and Mark Twain, simultaneously published non-fictional satire and social commentary on contemporary events.

In other cases, some essays’ influence has been so pervasive that they led to the creation of new genres. For example, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, originally composed as a series of essays rather than a novel, is often credited with inspiring the true crime genre that emerged after its publication.

Speeches

Similar to essays, speeches narrow the gap between a writer, their audiences, and contemporary events. In fact, speeches often narrow this gap even more so than essays. This is not only because they tend to respond to a more specific exigence than other nonfiction forms of literature, but also because they are either composed orally or meant to be read aloud at a specific moment in time.

The second nonfiction text that this chapter will focus on, Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” was prepared to be read at a specific event: an 1852 meeting of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in New York. Because of the speech’s import regarding the culture, history, and legacy of the United States, however, we continue to read it today and find it remains relevant in critiquing the white supremacist legacy of the nation.

Letters/Correspondence

Letters and correspondence (often from or between writers) can also be considered forms of nonfiction literature. More intimate than most of the other genres listed here, correspondence is shaped by the relationship between the writer and, usually, an audience of one. Letters exchanged form exigencies for one another (i.e., receiving a letter inspires the writing of another in response, and so on), and writers often employ the same tropes, schemes, and other literary elements that they might use in fiction. This includes point of view, diction, figurative language, symbolism, etc.

Additionally, literary correspondence can provide essential context for studying a fictional work, such as when an author writes to a literary critic or a loved one about a text. Mark Twain, for instance, frequently wrote letters to his publishers–enough for them to be published into their own collection, Mark Twain’s Letters to His Publishers.