To Tell A Story: On Blending Family History and Lived Experience in Nonfiction

Once upon a time, you couldn’t tell a story straight.Article continues after advertisement

The problem might be that you began as a poet. That focus on a moment, an image, that impulse to seize a scene and squeeze it dry, or spend days with it under a microscope, or live with it for hours in a vanity mirror, ring light fully on. If it’s not clear by now: you will ride a metaphor into the sunset, on repeat.

The problem might be that you like to play. You like to wander, shake containers up. You walk around genres as if structures were a playground: This slide? This sandbox? This set of bars to climb? This tunnel to hide in?

I say problem because when it comes to writing long-form narrative with a story arc, or an argumentative thread, you flail. Your dissertation suffered from this lack of storytelling stamina, too: each chapter made of an examination of small analytical moments, few of the moments or analyses leading to a larger point.

The problems are doubled, quadrupled, when it comes to writing your memoir. A memoir that includes multiple timelines, multiple narrative arcs, multiple main characters—or perhaps just two: you and your dad.Article continues after advertisement