My Life as a Foreign Country by Brian Turner is a memoir that chronicles Turner’s own wartime experiences as well as weaving through various narrative memories given to him by family. The memoir is divided into 136 sections that, together, form odd and brilliant parallels. They complement each other not just through their underlying meaning, but through the details that uncover their vivid sounds and images. Because of this unusual sequence, Turner is able to combine odd experiences and stories between civilian life and soldier life simultaneously with history and the present.
The memoir is not told in a linear sequence of his “real life” and does not attempt to create that pattern. Instead, Turner attempts to understand his memories and experiences
