What These Four Memoirists Show Us about Memoir's Rising Star

Maggie Smith, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Melissa Febos, and Susan Kiyo Ito come together this fall for Women Writing Memoir

I’ve written recently about memoir’s evolution, and how we’re living through one of the most exciting moments in the genre’s history. While I don’t have the definitive answers as to why this is, I do want to take a stab at articulating some of the reasons, and to talk about four memoirists who will be teachers in a course I’m co-hosting with Linda Joy Myers this fall. Women Writing Memoir runs October 1-November 5.

Reason #1: Playing with form, exemplified by the writing of Maggie Smith

As was the case for so many memoir writers, reading Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful blew open a portal of possibilities. This book is a mosaic, structurally beautiful in its fragmented approach. Maggie leans into poetry, repetition, and meta-narration (writing from an all-knowing, nearly omniscient voice) to craft a masterful story that doesn’t shy away from inquiry, speculation, and deep reflection. She also doesn’t shy away from her truth. I’ve talked to countless writers in the past year-plus since You Could Make This Place Beautiful came out who want to emulate Maggie’s style and who have garnered real courage from Maggie’s own brave claiming of her truth on the page. She writes about her ex, and about her children, in ways that honor herself and her story, but also with boundaries. The explosive impact of You Could Make This Place Beautiful is its showcasing of memoir as a series of moments that do not have to share the same form. Perhaps because she’s a poet, Maggie revels in different approaches: poems, snippets of prose, true scenes, reflections, and more. The resultant kaleidoscope through which the reader experiences her story is beautiful, and her impact on the genre’s evolution-in-progress cannot be overstated.

Reason #2: Breaking free from Western writing traditions, exemplified by the writing of Ingrid Rojas Contreras

When I read The Man Who Could Move Clouds, I knew from the opening pages that I was witnessing master storytelling. Ingrid honors country, lineage, and family in her book, and also weaves in inherited stories. So often I hear from writers who struggle mightily with their memoirs because they don’t remember. Ingrid writes from a past that existed before she was born. She writes from and out of amnesia. She pieces together a story of her own inheritance—that of a lineage of curanderos in her family, from her grandfather (the man who could move clouds), to her mother (who Ingrid so closely resembles it spooks people), to herself. What Ingrid has given to the genre is a kind of fearlessness. Perhaps because she is Colombian, her writing isn’t confined by Western writing traditions. Her story is expansive and magical, leaning into legends, tales, cuentos. The  industry’s relatively recent embrace of stories from international writers, from writers of color, and from writers on the margins is informing memoir’s evolution in the very best of ways—opening writers and readers to broader ways of thinking, of writing, and of experiencing memoir. Ingrid’s gift lies here, in the expansiveness of her storytelling and her prose, a vehicle of permission for anyone facing questions of how to execute a story they might not remember, or even might not have been present to.

Reason #3: Claiming our right to the genre, exemplified by the writing of Melissa Febos

In my book, Write On, Sisters!, I wrote about the experience of writing while female, noting that women face different experiences, challenging experiences, when they write their personal truths. There are double standards, where men are praised for writing about themselves and the minutiae of their lives while women are criticized for the same thing. Melissa Febos tackles this head-on in Body Work, out the gate dismantling the accusation that memoirists are navel-gazers. She writes: 

“I am done agreeing when my peers spit on the idea of writing as transformation, as catharsis, as—dare I say it—therapy. Tell me: who is writing in their therapeutic diary and then dashing it off to be published? I don’t know who these supposedly self-indulgent (and extravagantly well connected) narcissists are. But I suspect that when people denigrate them in the abstract, they are picturing women. I’m finished referring, in a derogatory way, to stories of body and sex and gender and violence and joy and childhood and family as navel-gazing.”  

Memoir has long been the terrain of the woman writer, so I’m not suggesting that the sea change we’re in has to do with more women writers in the space, but I will assert that women have changed. Maybe it was #MeToo, or maybe it’s because we’re horrified by our current political environment that’s so openly hostile to women and women’s rights, but women writers are unapologetically writing the stories of our lives—rife as they are with abuse and trauma, heartache and loss, estrangement and tension. We know that personal story is not only transformative for writers, but also for readers. We know that memoir is more popular than ever, even though it’s still disparaged and often maligned. Like me, Melissa is a champion and a defender of the genre. And this, too, matters. The bigger the chorus of voices refusing to back down, the more courage writers find to write their truths. Women writers take solace—and courage—from the sisterhood of writers who’ve come before them and shown them the way. Don’t doubt for a moment that the stories we see being published today are a direct outcome of brave women writers like Melissa who’ve lit the path to make it more visible to those of us who believe we can do it too.

Reason #4: Permission to wait, exemplified by the writing of Susan Kiyo Ito

I wrote on Substack several weeks ago about my decision to hold off on publishing my memoir for a while, and it was interviewing Susan this summer about the journey of her recent memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, that helped me to see how this would be both okay and possible. The timing of releasing our memoirs into the world is an important piece of the evolution I’m tracking because many of us are writing while older—from middle age or well beyond. In the beforetimes, when the only way to publish was traditional publishing, the stories we had access to were limited to what a select group of publishers decided had merit. When I was at Seal Press acquiring memoirs, I rejected books on the regular for the sole reason that we’d published a similar book before. This is the single-worst reason to reject a book, but it’s so common. Every book is different. Each book has its own journey, and even similar books find different readers. But more important, why should anyone be prevented from the experience of putting their book into the world because another writer has a similar story? Today there are more publishing options—from indie presses to university presses, from hybrid publishers to self-publishing. This has resulted in more stories from more women of a certain age, and more books about women’s experiences, our lives, our stories. For many of us, the merit of our work is proven out by the act of writing, of publishing, and from our eventual readers. All of this is mirrored in Susan’s publishing journey, and her knowledge that her book is better for having waited is something I’ve internalized as both permission and a mantra.

---

If you’re as inspired by any or all of these authors as much as I’ve been, join us for WOMEN WRITING MEMOIR. Each one of these writers have been a light for me over the past almost two years since I started writing my memoir. Plus, we’re joined by Regina Brooks, one of the most generous and knowledgeable agents I know. I’m inspired just thinking about these six weeks. Hope to see some of you there!