When publishing memoirs, writers pay the price of transparency, and the cost can become quite high when they write about family. With family memoirs, the stakes are always high, and there are ethical and practical choices that need to be made at every stage (Castro 4).

There has been a lot of debate on whether or not memoirists should give the public the whole truth about their family, especially when it comes to children, as such exposure could negatively affect their children’s lives (Castro 2). The New York Times article, “A Mother’s Memoir, A Son’s Anguish” explores such debates: David Sheff, whose memoir Beautiful Boy explores a child’s drug addiction, believes that “the imperative to protect a loved one, particularly a child, outweighs the responsibility to tell the truth” (Cohen); the memoirist, Susan Cheever, disagrees, saying, “’I strongly believe everybody has the right to their own story’; defining one’s material as inclusive of the intersecting stories of family members” (Cohen). In short, Cheever is basically saying that since memoirs, family memoirs in particular, are “relational narratives” (Smith 86)– they “incorporate extensive stories of related others within the context in order to act as a route of self-discovery for the author” (Smith 87) – they should not be any limits to how much of the ‘truth’ one shares with the public.

The fact that truth is high flexible and dependent on one’s perspective (Carter 46) means that relationality in family memoirs is bound to annoy some of the family members mentioned, not only because it exposes their embarrassing or shameful traits, but also because it shares stories that some family members may not necessarily view as ‘the truth’. Fortunately, some memoirists such as “Rigoberto González acknowledges, ‘I know that what I write down is simply my version, not the definitive, unchallengeable truth.’” (Castro 14). Nevertheless, since truth is greatly linked to power (Carter 46), the public, almost always, takes the memoirists account as truth since it’s usually the only version they get (the author holds the power). So, no matter how much the author acknowledges the fact that his account is bias, the unfair result of silencing family members’ unique perspectives on an event, will often, if not always, occur.

The essays in the book Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family provide insight on how authors wrestle with doubt, as well as highlights those moments when excluding family material may actually be the best choice (Castro 8). Jill Christman, whose stepmother’s “history of mental illness was so complicated, and sad,” (Castro 20) shares her decision “to leave her out of the memoir entirely.” (Castro 22). Paul Austin confesses his concerns about his daughter, who has Down syndrome, acknowledging that, “there are passages in the book that would hurt her, if she could read them. Should I have left those passages out?” (Castro 30).

When applying this issue to the book, Diamond Grill, by Fred Wah, are there any instances that could have potentially hurt, embarrassed, or even ‘silenced’ his family members? Possibly the “sloup” scene (Wah 66), when Fred Wah’s father mispronounced soup and “turned it into a joke, a kind of self put-down that he knows these white guys like to hear”? We should know that just because there hasn’t been a public feud between the Wah family, doesn’t mean the book didn’t offend anyone in it. Looking at the issue of family privacy and accuracy in depth has allowed me to read family memoirs such as Diamond Grill with an open-mind; constantly asking myself, “how could the author’s perspective have been different from others mentioned in the book”?

Works cited:

Carter, Kathryn. “Death and the Diary, or Tragedies in the Archive.” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 40, no. 2, 2006, pp. 42-59, https://doi.org/10.1353/jcs.2007.0012

Castro, Joy. Family trouble: memoirists on the hazards and rewards of revealing family. Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press, 2013. Print.

Cohen, Patricia. “A Mother’s Memoir, a Son’s Anguish.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 30 Aug. 2009. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. “Autobiographical Subjects.” Reading Autobiography (2002): 21-62. Web.