Are You Too Young to Teach Memoir?

By Michele Cantos Garcia

“I’m 70 and single again,” the glamorous actor-turned-writer read tenderly from her notes. It was her first time in a memoir class—and my first time teaching it—but she already had a solid grasp of what made an engaging hook and a juicy plot. Plus, she had something you can’t teach: a lifetime of experiences and enough distance to understand them.

As a young-ish memoirist (I’m 34) writing about my family’s immigration-related separation in the 90s, I hesitated t...