For thousands of years, history has been kept alive through the written word; I and the virtuous women, in particular, have recorded social struggles so that future generations can know the events that occurred throughout their lives. Through Freedom in the Family, Patricia Stephens Due and Tananarive Due worked to ensure that the injustices experienced by them and countless other African Americans during the civil rights movement were never forgotten. In their memoir, the mother and daughter duo listed all the obstacles they had to overcome in their fight for freedom for themselves and their family. Their story is one of searching for purpose, identity and the desire to be free in a sea of ​​discrimination and injustice, but above all it is a piece of history that has been discovered in the hope that it will never be repeated. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Patricia and Tananarive both state the purposes for which they wrote this memoir in the early chapters in a way that is effective in setting the tone of the memoir and underlining the importance of what the writers are undertaking. Patricia tells a brief anecdote from a time when she was sitting on a textbook committee and realized that none of the textbooks mentioned Tallahassee regarding the civil rights movement. She writes, “Without written documentation, I was told, the forty-nine days my sister and I spent in prison, the tear gas that burned my eyes, and the people I knew could not be included” (2). It is at this moment that Patricia realizes that she and her fellow freedom fighters are not yet part of history, and so she writes this memoir with the intention of turning their story into history. Storytelling is important to the Two family and this sentiment is echoed by Tananarive in her first chapter as she describes the Holocaust survivor telling her story in Miami Beach. Tananarive laments, “Soon she [the Holocaust survivor] will be gone, and all her stories will go with her” (5). Tananarive wants to make her story more concrete so that it doesn't disappear with her. He wants to ensure that “the children of strangers…will never, ever forget” the suffering of an entire race, and this becomes his main purpose in writing Freedom in the Family (6). Something to note is the effectiveness of both women's tone in the opening chapters. Both Patricia and Tananarive speak with a tone of urgency and an underlying sense of fear about what might happen if they don't complete this task. This tone lends credibility to the actions they describe later, as it makes it easier to see them as the fierce activists they are, fearing not for what might happen to them because of their actions, but for what would happen to the world if they don't act immediately. There is no doubt that, thanks to the action of Patricia and Tananarive, Freedom in the Family has become part of history. However, it is different from most of the history students will read in their classes because the way events and people are described makes it seem like the story is coming to life for readers. This is one of the most effective tools writers use, as it ensures that the events they describe stay in readers' minds long after they close the book. Take for example Tananarive's description of Patricia when she encounters the officers who accuse her husband of stealing machine guns in his black van. According to Tananarive, his mother “that night was in the [police] spotlight briefly and transparently because she was wearinga bulletproof vest…. My mother never backed down and certainly had no intention of starting” (215). Those images evoked by those few sentences are thrilling in a way that most depictions of the story are not. That brief story example is described in a way that makes it feel like it's the culmination of a gripping thriller. Most of the memoir is written similarly; the endings of most chapters contain elements of foreshadowing or other strong declarative statements about various characters that add dramatic flair to this part of the story. These descriptions further demonstrate the importance of storytelling to the Two family. They want their story to be something more than dull and boring like the textbooks Patricia was reading in her opening chapter; they want their history to be stories that subsequent generations can remember and share with others. An additional element of the memoir that makes it so captivating is its modern relevance. The way the struggles that the authors and other people describe in their memoirs are depicted, with such vivid details and expressive language, make it very easy to identify with them. An underlying theme of the memoir is that many of the problems faced by Patricia and Tananarive are problems that people face today, regardless of race. Take the question of identity and belonging that Tananarive wrestles with during his years at Northwestern University. When Tananarive writes, “I felt like a white woman in blackface when I walked into FMO [For Members Only, a black student organization] meetings,” she expresses feelings of loss on her college campus (108). These issues of discomfort in her own skin and lack of connection with her peers are issues that plague many college and even high school students today, and it's almost comforting to read that even a woman who has still done so many amazing things struggles with most common human emotions. Additionally, Freedom in the Family addresses the question of discovering what the purpose of one's life is. This problem is expressed most clearly when John says, “[Civil rights] was my life. Patricia talks about it all the time, how my whole life is” (151). The question of what you should do with your life, how you can make a difference in the world is a question that many people, young and old, struggle with today and which is described beautifully in Freedom in the Family. The memoir structure is another element of the work that makes it relevant to today's readers. The fact that the book is structured to tell two stories, each a generation apart and yet completely intertwined with each other, implies the continuous nature of the story. There is no set beginning or end to any historical period. The story of the civil rights movement as told by Patricia and Tananarive spans two generations, and the memoir's structure implies that there is no reason why it can't be an issue of the next generation: today's generation of college students. This problem is not over yet. Patricia also alludes to the actions of activists in modern times that echo the actions of activists she worked with when she was in college when she describes observing a “sit-in [in 2000] outside Florida Governor Jeb Bush's office in Tallahassee . [She] felt as if [she] had gone back in time” (364). He also writes about how that same year Tallahassee was the site of the largest protest march in the state's history. Patricia concludes her memoir with the words “History happens.