Family Trouble : Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family

Whenever a memoirist gives a reading, someone in the audience is sure to ask: How did your family react? Revisiting our pasts and exploring our experiences, we often reveal more of our nearest and dearest than they might prefer. This volume navigates the emotional and literary minefields that any writer of family stories or secrets must travel when depicting private lives for public consumption. Essays by twenty-five memoirists, including Faith Adiele, Alison Bechdel, Jill Christman, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Rigoberto González, Robin Hemley, Dinty W. Moore, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Mimi Schwartz, explore the fraught territory of family history told from one perspective, which, from another angle in the family drama, might appear quite different indeed. In her introduction to this book, Joy Castro, herself a memoirist, explores the ethical dilemmas of writing about family and offers practical strategies for this tricky but necessary subject. A sustained and eminently readable lesson in the craft of memoir, Family Trouble serves as a practical guide for writers to find their own version of the truth while still respecting family boundaries. Introduction : Mapping Hope / Joy Castro -- Chewing Band-aids : One Memoirist's Take On The Telling Of Family Secrets / Jill Christman -- Sally Could Delete Whatever She Wanted / Paul Austin -- Case By Case : When It Comes To Family You Still Have To Talk To / Mimi Schwartz -- At Its Center / Paul Lisicky -- The Day I Cried At Starbucks / Ruth Behar -- Memory Lessons / Rigoberto González -- The Part I Can't Tell You / Ariel Gore -- What The Little Old Ladies Feel : How I Told My Mother About My Memoir / Alison Bechdel -- Truths We Could Live With / Robin Hemley -- Writing The Black Family Home / Faith Adiele -- The Deeper End Of The Quarry : Fiction, Nonfiction, And The Family Dilemma / Dinty W. Moore -- Mama's Voices / Susan Olding -- Living In Someone Else's Closet / Susan Ito -- The True Story / Karen Salyer Mcelmurray -- I Might Be Famous / Ralph James Savarese -- A Spell Against Sorrow : Writing My Father In / Judith Ortiz Cofer -- Things We Don't Talk About / Aaron Raz Link -- You Can't Burn Everything / Allison Hedge Coke -- Done With Grief : The Memoirist's Illusion / Sandra Scofield -- The Seed Book / Stephanie Elizondo Griest -- Calling Back / Lorraine M. López -- Like Rain On Dust / Richard Hoffman -- The Bad Asian Daughter / Bich Minh Nguyen -- Your Mother Should Know / Sue William Silverman -- Writing About Family / Heather Sellers. Edited And With An Introduction By Joy Castro. Essays by twenty-five memorists, including Faith Adiele, Alison Bechdel, Jill Christman, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Rigoberto González, Robin Hemley, Dinty W. Moore, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Mimi Schwartz, explore the fraught territory of family history told from one perspective, which, from another angle in the family drama, might appear quite different indeed. In her introduction to this book, Joy Castro, herself a memorisist, explores the ethical dilemmas of writing about family and offers practical strategies for this tricky but necessary subject