By Brendan O’Meara
But what do you mean? A memoir is defined by it being MY story. How can you possibly expect to take myself out of the memoir?
That’s a different question, but here’s what many of the best memoirs have in common: The “me” is a narrator, but the narrator is looking outward while telling her story.
For example, though it is a novel, The Great Gatsby is a perfect example of a memoir that focuses on a scene and a central figure beyond the narrator. A Christmas Story, though grounded in Ralphie’s boyhood takes moments to shine light on his father, his mother, his brother, his peers.
Sarah Einstein’s Mot looks more outward than inward.
Certain navel-gazing memoirs, or memoirs that are so grounded in the interiority of the writer, have become famous and this sets up many writers to think that in order to write memoir, it must be about them at all costs. Me. Me. Me.
In the end, a reader doesn’t care about you. She cares about you as the conduit onto which she can overlay her own experience. If you’ve done your job, you dissolve away and the truth of your story sweeps the reader into her own.
That’s taking the me out of memoir.
