The Family Chapter Nobody Wants to Write

Every memoir has one chapter the writer has been avoiding. It is usually about a parent or a sibling. It is usually the chapter the book needs most. And it is usually the chapter that arrives last, when the writer has run out of ways to write around it.

Why the avoidance

The chapter is difficult because it is about a person who is still alive, or who died recently enough that people who loved them are still reading. The writer is worried, correctly, that the truth of the relationship will hurt someone. This is not a false fear. It is the real cost of memoir. Every memoir has some cost.

How to write it anyway

Three things help. First, wait. Most family chapters that get written in the first draft are wrong. Write it in the third or fourth draft, after you understand the book as a whole. The chapter will find its right size in relation to the rest.

Second, be specific. The chapters that hurt families most are the ones that generalize. My mother was cold. My brother was cruel. Those are conclusions. Instead, write the scene. In September of 1994 my mother did not come to my school play. She had told me she would. She did not call to say she was not coming. I found out from my father in the car afterwards. That is the material. The reader will draw their own conclusion. So will your mother.

Third, show the chapter to the family member before you publish it. Not to ask permission. To give them the dignity of not being surprised. Some will ask you to change things. Some will thank you. Some will not speak to you for a year. All three are common. All three are survivable.

What to do if you cannot

Sometimes the chapter genuinely cannot be published while the person is alive. This is a real constraint. Write the chapter anyway. Put it in a folder. The book that publishes without it will be a smaller book. That is a cost too. Only the writer can weigh the costs against each other.

The one thing I do not recommend is pretending the chapter is not needed. Readers can feel a gap. A memoir that avoids its hardest chapter reads like a memoir that avoids its hardest chapter.