In this Book

summary

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.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
  2. pp. 1-3
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  1. Title Page
  2. p. 4
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  1. Copyright Page
  2. p. 5
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-viii
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  1. Introduction: Mapping Hope
  2. pp. 1-14
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  1. Part 1 · Drawing Lines
  1. Chewing Band-Aids
  2. pp. 17-28
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  1. Sally Could Delete Whatever She Wanted
  2. pp. 29-32
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  1. Case by Case: When it Comes to Family You Still Have to Talk to
  2. pp. 33-37
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  1. At Its Center
  2. pp. 38-40
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  1. The Day I Cried at Starbucks
  2. pp. 41-49
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  1. Memory Lessons
  2. pp. 50-57
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  1. The Part I Can’t Tell You
  2. pp. 58-68
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  1. Part 2 · The Right to Speak
  1. What the Little Old Ladies Feel: How I Told My Mother about My Memoir
  2. pp. 71-72
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  1. Truths We Could Live With
  2. pp. 73-77
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  1. Writing the Black Family Home
  2. pp. 78-87
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  1. The Deeper End of the Quarry: Fiction, Nonfiction, and the Family Dilemma
  2. pp. 88-94
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  1. Mama’s Voices
  2. pp. 95-113
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  1. Living in Someone Else’s Closet
  2. pp. 114-122
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  1. Part 3 · Filling the Silence
  1. The True Story
  2. pp. 125-130
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  1. I Might Be Famous
  2. pp. 131-136
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  1. A Spell against Sorrow: Writing My Father In
  2. pp. 137-145
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  1. Things We Don’t Talk About
  2. pp. 146-159
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  1. You Can’t Burn Everything
  2. pp. 160-168
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  1. Done with Grief: The Memoirist’s Illusion
  2. pp. 169-174
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  1. Part 4 · Conversations of Hope
  1. The Seed Book
  2. pp. 177-181
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  1. Calling Back
  2. pp. 182-188
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  1. Like Rain on Dust
  2. pp. 189-196
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  1. The Bad Asian Daughter
  2. pp. 197-200
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  1. Your Mother Should Know
  2. pp. 201-207
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  1. Writing about Family
  2. pp. 208-214
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  1. Gratitude
  2. pp. 215-216
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  1. Source Acknowledgments
  2. pp. 217-218
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 219-224
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