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Question

Difficulty: HardTypes and Genres of Prose

Read the excerpt below:

'I do not intend to record every milestone from my cradle to the present day. Instead, I focus solely on the crucial years between 1975 and 1980, when my work with the underground press in Lagos brought me into direct confrontation with the military regime. These pages capture the psychological terror, the secret meetings, and the personal crisis of faith during those five turbulent years.'

Which prose subgenre is best illustrated by the excerpt above?

  1. MemoirAnswer
  2. B
    Autobiography
  3. C
    Biography
  4. D
    Historical fiction

Answer

Memoir
A memoir is a non-fiction prose subgenre in which the writer focuses on a specific, significant period, theme, or series of events in their life rather than providing a full chronological account from birth to present. The narrator in the excerpt explicitly states that they are focusing solely on a five-year period of political struggle rather than recording their life from the cradle.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Determine the narrative perspective and authorship of the text.
The passage uses first-person pronouns ('I', 'my') to describe personal lived experiences.
This establishes that the work is a first-person self-narrative rather than a third-person narrative written about someone else.
2
Analyze the temporal scope and structural focus of the passage.
The narrator explicitly rejects covering their life 'from my cradle to the present day' and limits the focus to a specific five-year timeframe (1975–1980).
Differentiating between a complete life history and a selective period account is key to identifying non-fiction prose subgenres.
3
Map the identified structural features to the correct prose genre definition.
A first-person non-fiction prose narrative that centers on a specific phase, event, or theme is classified as a memoir.
This distinguishes memoir from autobiography, which requires a comprehensive chronological record of a person's whole life.

Key Concept

Distinguishing Memoir from Autobiography and Other Non-Fiction Prose Genres
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Topics

Types and Genres of Prose

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