Learning to Live Again: Contemporary US Memoir as Biopolitical Self-Care Guide

Using Michel Foucault’s concepts of biopower and “technologies of the self,” this essay argues that memoir can function as a mode of lifestyle instruction, teaching readers about self-care while enforcing and perpetuating norms of health, productivity, and attitude. In particular, memoirs about addiction, such as Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Koren Zailckas’s Smashed, and James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces become biopolitical guides for living, as they explore the authors’ deviance from norms and illustrate possibilities for reentering the realm of the normal, productive, and well-managed.