Mom and Dad will hate me: the ethics of writing about family in memoir-fiction

Abstract

ABSTRACTWriting about one’s family, regardless of whether the family is represented in fiction or nonfiction, is oftentimes a cathartic experience for the writer. However, doing so can also intensify tumultuous family relationships, create libel and character defamation lawsuits, and result in family estrangement. Thus, many novelists, memoirists, and nonfiction writers alike struggle with genre labels and restrictions, causing them to censor their content. This censoring makes the truthfulness of their work suffer, which is doubly problematic. By examining the work of Karl Ove Knausgaard, Erica Jong, Jeffrey Eugenides, Augusten Burroughs, and other writers whose work dares to cross the genre lines of memoir versus fiction, I explore why the act of challenging these ‘life-writing’ genres is so problematic for both the writer and the reader. I also examine why life-writers, who search for authorial truth and narrative believability, often find themselves estranged from their families if they achieve literary success and personal catharsis.