In a Book I Haven’t Read, I Found Permission to Write

By Jen Gilman Porat

Recently, my newsfeed featured a link to an article from The New Yorker, “Can a Memoir Say Too Much?” Instead of clicking it, my eyes snapped shut as if I’d stumbled across a dead body. The article focused only on Blake Butler’s new book, Molly, but I didn’t know this yet. I feared cancel culture had come for the entire genre.

How could a mere title wound me? It couldn’t. I was primed for defense. I’d been wrestling with the ethical challenges of writing memoir for y...