This is what I have so far, but I don't know if I'm doing it right because this is my first ever biographical essay.
My mother and grandmother were citizens of their home country of ----- when a group of highly trained soldiers and their leader declared war on the government. Very quickly, a full on war broke out. They fled from their home after a grenade came through their living room ceiling. My grandfather had died some years earlier, and with him their primary source of income, causing my grandmother who had never worked a day in her life to learn odd jobs needed in the market. Most of the time, she succeeded with no other choice. When the civil war started, she couldn't go sell watermelons and goats, since her children didn't have another parent if she were to die. This caused them to live very simple lives with whatever food they could find. They asked family members they used to feed when they were able to, for food when they had nothing to eat and were often turned away while the members hid their piles of nutrition.
They fled to ----, and later got the paperwork to come to America. They arrived with nothing more than the clothes in their suitcases and the debt from their flight tickets. When my mother married my father, neither of them had anything to their names, and thus began the struggle to provide for their family back home, and later their children.
I remember waking up in the tiny apartment we lived in, getting dressed, and heading to school every morning. Despite them working two jobs at times, I was never late for school.
Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,847 
4786 It is not advisable for you to spend so much time discussing the back story of your family. The biographical essay would like to get to know you in relation to your family relationship and how your family raised you. It is not about the life experiences of your ancestors. The best way to approach this essay would be to discuss life shaping moments that you have had with individual family members. Limit this to only the family members who have actually influenced your life in terms of academic mindset, career ambitions, and life goals. So start with your parents. One paragraph of 200 words or so individually for your mom and dad. Then use another 200 words for any words of wisdom that might relate to your life outlook based on your grandparents experience in life. Look for one of your teachers who inspired you to achieve academically. Describe how that influenced your academic and professional ambitions, another 200 words. Finally, use the last 200 words to wrap up the essay. Use your personal point of view to describe what you feel you collectively learned from these people that you would consider to be your future outlook, why you want to achieve that, and why these have helped to develop your personality and mindset as an adult. The focus should always be on you and your relationship to the people around you. It should not simply tell the story of the people related to you.
