Occasionally (though rarely) when I’m reading a memoir, I feel as if I’ve just stopped to gawk at a massive accident on the highway. It’s sensationalism at its worst. The writing is poor. There’s nothing redeeming in the story. I don’t finish these memoirs. I donate them to someone who enjoys a good train wreck.
Actually I’m not the type of person who can handle suffering at all. I stopped eating meat thirty years ago when I learned about the horrific conditions that many animals live in if they’re being raised to provide meat. I have nightmares when I see something awful on the news. When I’m with someone who’s suffering, I feel their pain as if it were my own. Images remain with me for months.
So why do I - and hundreds of thousands of other people - love memoirs?
Here’s why:
Humanity is fascinating. These past several months I’ve read memoirs about searching for a biological parent, one that detailed an escape from an island when an earthquake shattered her vacation, a humorous memoir about finding a second home in a new country, a surprising story about what a Chicago police officer faces during a typical month, a story of a harrowing escape from Iran, and a fascinating memoir about a woman who lived on a boat year-round. Life bustles all around us and memoir is the best way to discover it.
Memoirs are also an incredible journey into the mind, exploring the way other people think. More than most genres, memoir provides the space for deep reflection. We begin to understand why people love adventure over security (or vice-versa), how we struggle with marriage and make decisions to remain or leave, and how we cope with and rise above pain and sorrow. We see the intricate process of change and the mechanisms at work that lead to new belief systems. We understand how someone chooses to forgive - or why they didn’t. No other genre allows us to wander inside another person’s thought processes in quite the same way as a memoir.
As we read a memoir, we also feel a sense of community. Yes, that person’s story is unique but the theme is universal. They’ve loved wildly, had exquisite moments of joy, relished life as an adventure, experienced loss, felt excruciating physical and/or emotional pain, survived the onslaughts life has thrown at them, and found out that whatever they endured to enjoy that new slice of life was worth it. Yes, you think as you read a memoir, they know how I feel and what I’m going through. Yes, you think as you read a memoir, I can do this and it will be worth it in the end.
Obviously, many memoirs involve childhood abuse and I wonder if that’s why the genre sometimes gets a bad rap. I’m reading one right now, in fact. And yes, I cringe at the occasional paragraph that gets a little graphic. But the vast majority of this memoir is how the author survived. If we don’t read stories about childhood abuse, we’ll never truly understand the extent of it, how easily it can happen right under our noses, or how excruciatingly difficult it is for a child to tell an adult what’s happening. Abuse memoirs are, without exception, not tales of abuse but of survival. I stand in awe of these authors.
Selfishly, a memoir can make us feel grateful for our own lives. As a child I was never the victim of sexual abuse but I’ve read enough memoirs that I know the telltale signs in a child and I keep an eye on the children in my life. Recently I read a fabulous travel memoir and realized that adventure comes at a cost - and it isn’t one I’m willing to pay for. The woman who wrote the spellbinding memoir about her child being diagnosed with a brain tumor? I’ve had nothing in my life that compares. I close these books feeling a fresh rush of gratitude.
Uniquely, memoirs provide an escape from our own lives while remaining in touch with reality. It’s real life. Many memoirs are beautifully written and I’m swept away by the way an author has crafted his story, the perfect alignment of finely tuned sentences. The story crests and explodes and gently meanders, and then restarts the process. We’re in this thing called life together and we’re telling our stories. I’d love to hear yours.
