Takeaway in Memoir
by Brooke Warner
What it is, the purpose it serves, and how to practice it (all in service of deepening your connection to your readers)
This week’s monthly newsletter is a look at one of my favorite memoir topics: “takeaway.” It’s something I gravitate toward teaching again and again because it’s the heart of memoir and harnessing its power will elevate your memoir in extraordinary ways.
Memoir is comprised mostly of scene and reflection. Something happens = scene. How you feel about what happened or why it matters = reflection. But there’s an extra layer of reflection we all have access to—and that’s takeaway. If you are struck by the power of connection while you’re reading a memoir, it’s usually because the author moved away from the “I” for a moment, making you, the reader, feel more a part of the experience. This kind of universal writing often employs “you” (second person) or “we” (first person plural), while simultaneously reiterating the themes of the book.
In the examples below, Caroline Knapp writes about drinking in Drinking, A Love Story; Nicole Chung writes about being adopted in All You Can Ever Know; and Roxane Gay writes about her body in Hunger. Each of the examples, you’ll see, focuses on the core theme (what the book is about).
How takeaway is different from reflection
While reflection asks, “Why does this matter to me?” takeaway asks, “Why does this matter to all of us?” Reflection often follows scenes. Sometimes it even lives inside scenes, where a writer is showing (and sometimes telling) us the impact of a moment. Reflection includes context, musing, and meaning-making, but usually from a personal frame of reference.
Takeaway, by contrast, broadens the frame of reference, employing some of the same techniques as reflection, but attempting to show why what happened (the scene) matters on a universal level.
One way to notice takeaway in other writers’ memoirs is to look for moments when the writer steps out of the “I” and into the “you” or the “we.” This way of writing connects with readers because it pulls them in. Suddenly what they’re reading is not the singular experience of the writer; instead, it’s the universal experience of all of us.
Purpose and power of takeaway
Takeaway connects the writer’s individual experience to the reader’s shared humanity. It invites the reader in. Instead of simply narrating events, the memoirist pauses to interpret or contextualize those events, offering observations, questions, or truths. This deepens emotional resonance and builds trust with your reader.
Strategies for practicing takeaway
Start with your themes (e.g., loss, identity, resilience). What is your book about? Themes are springboards for takeaway, just as they are for reflection. Only with takeaway you’re consciously reaching for the universal. Instead of interpreting why something matters to you, you interpret why it matters to everyone.
Practice the shift from “I” to “we” or “you” to invite the reader in.
Make declarative, bold statements of truth: “It’s true,” “Here’s the tricky part,” “What I know for sure.” Then follow these statements with what you know, but without using the “I” and see what unfolds.
Allow plenty of space for musings, rhetorical questions, and metaphorical thinking. Don’t worry about slowing down the narrative too much; that’s the whole point.
Examples
I love Caroline Knapp’s Drinking, A Love Story for many reasons, but mostly because it’s chock-full of takeaway. In describing how she became an alcoholic, Caroline Knapp writes:
“Of course, there is no simple answer. Trying to describe the process of becoming an alcoholic is like trying to describe air. It’s too big and mysterious and pervasive to be defined. Alcohol is everywhere in your life, omnipresent, and you’re both aware and unaware of it almost all the time; all you know is you’d die without it, and there is no simple reason why this happens, no single moment, no physiological event that pushes a heavy drinker across a concrete line into alcoholism. It’s a slow, gradual, insidious, elusive becoming.”
Nicole Chung has some real zingers in All You Can Ever Know, including this paragraph. Note how she moves from the first person plural (“us”) into the first person (“I”). Being at ease with this kind of fluidity in your own work will help your takeaway feel more integrated into your prose.
“Family lore given to us as children has such hold over us, such staying power. It can form the bedrock of another kind of faith, one to rival any religion, informing our beliefs about ourselves, and our families, and our place in the world. When tiny, traitorous doubts arose, when I felt lost or alone or confused about the things I couldn’t know, I told myself that something as noble as my birth parents’ sacrifice demanded my trust. My loyalty.”
In Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Roxane Gay employs a popular method of takeaway that involves reaching for the social/political/social and placing yourself inside a particular context. In this excerpt, the context she’s placing herself in is that of “woman.” As a woman in this country, she can make the kind of assertion/conclusion she does, stepping outside of the “I” and claiming the “we,” which makes the passage relatable to all women.
“This is what most girls are taught—that we should be slender and small. We should not take up space. We should be seen and not heard, and if we are seen, we should be pleasing to men, acceptable to society. And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear, but it’s something that needs to be said, loudly, over and over again, so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us.”
In closing, takeaway isn’t just literary decoration—it’s a bridge between your story and your reader. Whether it shows up in a poetic musing, a social-political digression, or a universal truth, it signals that you're thinking deeply and generously about the themes you’re putting forward in your book. And because most memoirists aren’t famous, it’s the themes that will likely draw readers to your book in the first place. Practicing takeaway strengthens your writing by transforming your personal insight into shared meaning. And that is the heart of the matter. The heart of your memoir.