Memoirs Ahoy!

This week in senior literature and composition we explored the world of memoirs. Dictionary.com describes a memoir as a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources. We were assigned to read a memoir of our choice by the end of september. When this was first launched on us earlier this week, I immediately knew I wanted to read a memoir about a musical artist I followed. I thought it would be interesting to see how artists like Biggie Smalls or Childish Gambino grew up. I asked one of the librarians if they had any memoirs that fit my interest but all they could come up with was a book LL Cool J wrote about his life called "I Make My Own Rules". I didn't know much about LL Cool J besides him being an old school rapper, having a very recognizable name, and that he is a well known actor. So I wasn't very interested in reading a book he wrote about his life. But after reading a couple sentences, I thought it would be a "hoot" to read.

Later that week I finished the first part of the book, but it wasn't exactly how I thought the book was going to read. The first couple sentences makes the book seem like it's going to be about how to get girls and become famous, but then as I read further into the book, I really got to know what Cool James life was like as a kid and it wasn't pretty. It turns out his mother along with his grandfather got shot by his own father as James watched. This was not the end of the messed up stories of his childhood though. As I read on in his book his mom started recovering from the bullet wounds even though her doctor said she would never walk again. Her body therapist believed that she could and she eventually did, later her body therapist became her boyfriend. They were together over a large span of years but the messed up thing was that during this time, this body therapist was constantly beating James.