Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780803246928)

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 Gonz疝ez, 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.


Author: Joy Castro
ISBN-10: 0803246927
ISBN-13: 9780803246928
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2013
Pages: 232
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.74lbs
Size: 8.96h x 6.07w x 0.63d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2013
Publishers Weekly 08/19/2013