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Not All Memoir Writing is Misery, So Let’s Stop Dumping it All in the Same Category
Writer’s sour grapes are not turning whining into wine
Some people around these parts don’t think of memoir as “real art”. Even great memoir, to them, is probably just diaristic whining. They don’t like it; they would rather be reading or I guess writing stuff they think of as more meaningful (so uh why don’t they).
On the one hand, I get it. I dislike misery memoir and so called trauma Olympics too. I have never read misery memoir personally. But lately there is a tendency in the sour grapes bracket here to lump all nonfiction and memoir that isn’t a fairy sunshine story together in the same category.
Which I think is unfair. Bad stuff happens to all of us, unless we are very lucky. Most of us don’t begin to process childhood trauma or tough times until we are adults, never mind getting to the young adulthood stage. We ideally learn and grow from these life tumults, maybe after making the same mistakes a few times. It might take years or decades to put together some of the puzzle pieces.
I hope I know whereof I speak here. It is something I have been conscious of trying not to create ever since I started writing about my cancer diagnosis and the aftermath many moons ago. I felt disconnected…
