Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature

by Meredith Maran

memoir is not simply stringing together the five or ten good stories you’ve been telling about your wacky childhood for your whole life. To cross the threshold into the deeper mysteries, you need to ask yourself why you’ve been telling those particular stories, and not the millions of others you could tell.