Life is the fountain of stories with different purposes. May it be a message of encouragement, inspirational, motivational, or helpful in some other way. Life has a thousand faces, and its looks are different and unique to each other.

Life can be written in papers through memoirs. This genre is focused on the author’s personal account and experiences. A great example of a remarkable memoir is the life story of Charles Sampson, a gripping story of reflection as well as a tale of his fantastic Journey to the ancient land named Senegambia.

One must not remember when thinking about writing a memoir is it’s not about you as a writer, but it’s about how your story can benefit your reader. Therefore, you must think of something that is rooted in your life’s story that you consider the reader can be inspired, motivated, or have valuable lessons they can get when reading the book.

For example, in the book “Sparrows of Senegambia” by Charles Sampson. The story reflects basically the author’s journey and reflections. Sampson’s travel in 2005 to Senegal was the beginning of his knowledge of Senegambia, a historical name for a geographical region in West Africa, now no longer recognized by that name. It is located adjacent to the West African countries of Senegal and The Gambia. His travel to the West African slave port Goree Island while in Senegal opened my eyes to the significance of Senegambia. According to him, he compares his American family to be as the sparrows, birds that symbolize power, hard work, diligence, productivity, and persistence. “The flight of the sparrow allows it to rise above circumstances of reality, doom and dismay.”

To find the memoir’s purpose, one must think of the core reason why a particular person is writing and the valuable lesson that a writer wants to convey. There are many who writes memoirs who are also the type of people who like posing questions, and this quality suggests a particular personality trait inherent to writers, especially memoirist. Posing questions is inherent to wanting to understand our past experiences.

It is also true that writing a memoir helps you to identify the threads and themes in your life and makes sense of what you have lived. Just like how Charles Sampson did to his memoir “Sparrows of Senegambia”, he found the true essence of his life by finding the exact metaphor that he used in describing his family and finding his connection to the land he knows by heart.

Writing a memoir is a transformative journey. Writing, in general, is a fantastic experience, but there is something about writing a memoir that transforms someone’s soul. One of its noticeable reason is that it is based on a true story but is more than that. What we are reading is the story not just mirrors a person but the world as well. We are reading something that we can relate to and the circumstances that [people experience every day.

A memoir contributes to recorded history, to family, friends, and the world. Just like Charles Sampson story goes, basically, a journey in which he emphasized his journey of finding the truth behind his origin or his fons et origo.

A memoir provides a way to share your experiences, worldview, life lessons, and wisdom with others. The ways Charles Sampson wrote his memoir is like that: a sharing of experiences. What Sampson did is to share with us his journey. He wants the reader to experience of a lifetime that entails an exciting, gripping, and profound illustration of what it feels like to be in-depth and give a lesson that resonates with all !

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