Autobiographical Narration Example

A strong example of digging into the past for essays in the present. From The Good Men Project, a personal story of a daughter learning new details of her father's history. Daiva Markelis writes in the opening paragraph:

My father told me once, out of the blue, that he had been a cook for the Germans during the occupation. Because he’d left it at that, for years I thought he had willfully joined the Nazis. The fact that his first name was Adolfas—the Lithuanian version of Adolph—added to the evidence compiling in my head. I lived ashamed of his secret past, fearful of the day when proof of his atrocities would come to light, his photograph plastered across the front page of The Chicago Tribune. I didn’t realize that my father hated his name, would correct his American employers when they called him Adolph: “It’s Aaah-dolfas,” he’d drawl.

Read more at http://goodmenproject.com/

Markelis' introductory paragraph pulls the reader into her account of a man she thought she understood, and then reveals the hidden depths.
•[English 1302 students in particular pay attention to the last section of the essay where the author juggles personal history with critical analysis. Note the verb tense changes.]