Why would anyone write a memoir?

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I sometimes wonder why on earth I wanted to write a memoir. Why would anyone want to delve into personal tragedies, pain, struggles. Or, be honest. Be vulnerable. Who wants that?

When I first pitched my story about living off the grid in the mountains of southern France, an agent said, “Oh no. It must be more – how you grew; what you learned from your experience; what it meant to you. So I dug and I dug and today, six years later I am so sick of this f***memoir.

So, again, why write a memoir? Purging is no reason. Information dump is not a memoir. At the very least, hopefully, one can grow from another’s experiences, learn from other’s mistakes, and feel a sense of empathy from another’s words. And aren’t we all figuring out that empathizing, the “walking a mile in another’s shoes,” is about as important as anything we can do?

“Was it worth it?” my friend Pam asked. “Reading one hundred memoirs in one big surge?”

Absolutely. Mostly, because the project led me to stories I’d never have read otherwise. Take, Tobias Wolff’s Pharoahs of the Army, a collection about war. But, actually, it’s not about war; it’s about people. People who react humanely in an otherwise inhumane setting. It’s about people with war all around them.

Like every school child who grew up during Vietnam, I watched the nightly television news and saw gruesome images of severed arms, bloodied legs, napalmed children. I did not wish to read about war. Any yet, I can’t recommend Pharoahs more strongly.

The Voices in My Head by Emma Forest
The House of Sky by Ivan Doig
My Life with My Brother by Nicholas Sparks
Finding Grace by Donna Van Liere666
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson
The Road to Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam
Boys in My Youth by JoAnn Beard
I’m All Over That by Shirley McClaine
Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See by Mike May
The Sparkled Eye Boy by Amy Benson
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy
A House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Drinking by Caroline Knapp