Do memoirists have the right to tell the story they want to? Some memoirists argue that if people didn't want to be written about, they shouldn't have done the things they did. Other writers change or soften the bits about others in their memoir, either out of a desire not to hurt someone, or out of confusion about what their own story is.
Some warn that we should just tell our own stories, that the stories of others, be they siblings, parents or neighbours, should be left out. I waited until my parents had passed before I started researching the abuse that happened in my village school and the role my parents played in that incident. My second husband died before I wrote the memoir of our marriage (The Full Catastrophe).
Recently I found myself in a dilemma - can I write about the impact on me of having two adopted siblings and an adopted aunt? One person said I cannot write about this - it is their story, not mine. But what about my experience and reactions - are they mine to tell?
I think of families, and communities, and the whole of humankind as a hand-knitted sweater. Strands of yarn become one entity through the process of being woven together. Before that unifying undertaking, the strands are individuals. Depending on how tightly the sweater is knitted and how old the garment is, if you unravel it, the individual strands will be kinked or bent - holding the history of once having been knitted together. If you tell the story of only one strand, it won't be a complete story - you won't see that it was once part of a whole sweater - a whole story.
As I contemplate this, I think about memoir. I see strands - the other lives that interconnect with ours - as integral parts of our own story. We are affected by our parents' choices, their mental health, and their actions. How do those who have been abused tell their story without writing about the perpetrator? In Melissa Cistaro's memoir, Pieces of My Mother, she showed how her life was shaped by her mother's desertion. Her story would be mysterious and possibly incomprehensible if she wrote about the events in her
own life without that important fact. Her mother's actions were integral to her story. Equally, Jeannette Walls' book, "The Glass Castle", or Tara Westover's memoir "educated", would be meaningless without the descriptions of their respective parents' dysfunction. How can our memoir make sense without the stories of others? Does our sweater hold together without all the strands that have been knitted into it?
Some of us are tightly knitted into our biological family, our marital family, or our cultural family; some of us are more loosely knitted. Strands enter and leave our lives - sweaters - through births, adoptions, friendships, marriages, divorces, and deaths. If we don't make note of our individual experiences, our stories will be difficult to understand. But where does our story start and where does it end? Where is the boundary? Is there one?
Perhaps it is how we write our stories, not whom we write about. This is the advantage of "show don't tell." We should strive to show the involvement of others in our lives as it occurred - without assumptions. They are part of our story, so remembering this keeps us from pulling out our strands and trying to make sense of them in isolation. It also permits us to write about others when their story helps to make sense of ours.
Some warn that we should just tell our own stories, that the stories of others, be they siblings, parents or neighbours, should be left out. I waited until my parents had passed before I started researching the abuse that happened in my village school and the role my parents played in that incident. My second husband died before I wrote the memoir of our marriage (The Full Catastrophe).
Recently I found myself in a dilemma - can I write about the impact on me of having two adopted siblings and an adopted aunt? One person said I cannot write about this - it is their story, not mine. But what about my experience and reactions - are they mine to tell?
I think of families, and communities, and the whole of humankind as a hand-knitted sweater. Strands of yarn become one entity through the process of being woven together. Before that unifying undertaking, the strands are individuals. Depending on how tightly the sweater is knitted and how old the garment is, if you unravel it, the individual strands will be kinked or bent - holding the history of once having been knitted together. If you tell the story of only one strand, it won't be a complete story - you won't see that it was once part of a whole sweater - a whole story.
As I contemplate this, I think about memoir. I see strands - the other lives that interconnect with ours - as integral parts of our own story. We are affected by our parents' choices, their mental health, and their actions. How do those who have been abused tell their story without writing about the perpetrator? In Melissa Cistaro's memoir, Pieces of My Mother, she showed how her life was shaped by her mother's desertion. Her story would be mysterious and possibly incomprehensible if she wrote about the events in her
own life without that important fact. Her mother's actions were integral to her story. Equally, Jeannette Walls' book, "The Glass Castle", or Tara Westover's memoir "educated", would be meaningless without the descriptions of their respective parents' dysfunction. How can our memoir make sense without the stories of others? Does our sweater hold together without all the strands that have been knitted into it?
Some of us are tightly knitted into our biological family, our marital family, or our cultural family; some of us are more loosely knitted. Strands enter and leave our lives - sweaters - through births, adoptions, friendships, marriages, divorces, and deaths. If we don't make note of our individual experiences, our stories will be difficult to understand. But where does our story start and where does it end? Where is the boundary? Is there one?
Perhaps it is how we write our stories, not whom we write about. This is the advantage of "show don't tell." We should strive to show the involvement of others in our lives as it occurred - without assumptions. They are part of our story, so remembering this keeps us from pulling out our strands and trying to make sense of them in isolation. It also permits us to write about others when their story helps to make sense of ours.
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