I’ve been working on my family history this week, sifting through my notes to try to cobble together basic timelines and family trees, figuring out the gaps in my knowledge. It has been fun and surprisingly efficient. With my new 45/15 work technique, I’ve gotten a lot more done, and faster, than I ever expected was possible.
Working through so much material at once, and returning to the project after several months’ hiatus, has given me a different perspective on it. Before, my feeling was,”My family’s history is so unusual, I have to share it!” That’s still true, but I’ve realized I no longer feel that this is enough. As far as the Cultural Revolution goes, I don’t know that my family suffered more than most; as far as immigration, they’ve had a lot of support and they started out with better resources than many. So the story alone, while definitely compelling, is not going to change the world. Which on some level is fine. But, given the chance, yes — I would like a chance to change the world.
I have a theory about memoirs, and especially memoirs of challenging periods in history: they all come across the same. It sounds terribly callous, but I think it’s true. Unless you already have some personal connection to the people or the setting, every Holocaust memoir you read sounds the same; every slave tale or immigration story sounds the same. In a very real sense, once you’ve read one, you’ve read them all. I know this is a terrible thing to say, and please say so if you think I’m wrong. But I think that unless the material already resonates deep within you and your history, all the names are just names and all the places are just places you’ve never been. The reading experience goes like this: you read the first memoir of that period or of that people. If it’s the Holocaust, it’s probably Anne Frank’s diary (which I love) in middle school. It’s all new to you and you think, “Oh my god! This is horrible! I can’t believe this happened!” It rocks your worldview for a while, as it should. But then the next book you read about the same topic, or maybe the one after that, you stop seeing the atrocities and the miracles and the beauty as unique, and you start thinking, “Oh, yeah, I already knew that they did that. In that other book, the bad stuff was worse.” And before you know it, you’re numb to the stories and they all sound the same. You can pick up a different memoir about a different era, and go through it all again. You start off, “Oh my god, Rwanda?! That’s awful!” and pretty soon you’re secretly sick of hearing about Rwanda. It’s because you are receiving these stories as representations — “this is another story of something that happened in the past to people I don’t know” — and not really connecting with the characters as individuals. Tell me, please: Is this true for you?
The memoirs I have read that have stuck in my mind have been ones that somehow transcended “this crazy stuff happened and we overcame it (or didn’t).” I will probably never forget Viktor Frankl’s Holocaust book, Man’s Search for Meaning, because he interprets his memories through his trained psychotherapist’s eye. Maus is ostensibly a story about Art Spiegelman’s parents, but what resonated most strongly with me was Spiegelman’s own reactions to their stories. Persepolis is similar; both these graphic novels are chronicles of turbulent times, but they’re also explorations of how you live with knowledge of your (or your family’s) painful history. In Jill Ker Conway’s The Road from Coorain, she describes rural Australia in the 1930s with such clarity of detail, it’s impossible for me to simply file it away as “stuff that happened to other people way back when.” Her book reads like fiction, meaning that it sucks me into its world and characters just the way novels do.
I’ve been thinking about all this in relation to my own project, and I’ve realized I have three motives in writing my family’s story:
- Record this story so it won’t be lost.
- Use this story to make one family’s Cultural Revolution and immigration experience known to others, either for historical, social, cultural, or personal value.
- Use this story to affect people and make them think (change the world).
These motives have different consequences and different requirements.
- Record this story so it won’t be lost. I can achieve this very easily, by writing a straightforward narrative of events, saving it on the computer, and backing it up. As long as the story is preserved, publication is not required. When my relatives pass on, their story will still be here.
- Use this story to make one family’s Cultural Revolution and immigration experience known to others, either for historical, social, cultural, or personal value. If I want the story to reach an audience, I need it to be published, ideally with a wide distribution. But it can still take the form of the straightforward narrative I mentioned in #1. The point is just to get the story out there where people can access it.
- Use this story to affect people and make them think (change the world). This is the toughie. By the time I finish my current stage of work, I’ll be very close to finishing #1, and could then move on to #2 if I chose. But I won’t, because I want to try for #3. How do I make my story resonate with large numbers of people? I don’t want it to just be people’s gateway Chinese-immigration story (which maybe Amy Tan has already done anyway), I want people to remember and think about it the way they do with their favorite works of fiction. I want it to be real to them, not foreign, not symbolic, but as living and tangible as a book can be. I don’t know if I can do this and I’m not sure how, but it’s worth the attempt. At worst, it’ll just be #2, and as long as I’ve done my best, I can live with that.
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
What a great project you’re working on! For me, memoirs of events don’t sound the same if written well. I agree with you about how the events seem less shocking the more we read about them, but the affect on people’s lives isn’t less shocking. At least to me it isn’t. I agree with what you say about Maus though I think the point he may be trying to make is how the events continue to affect future generations.
Best of luck with your project.
Thank you for commenting, Simone — and for the well wishes for my project.
What do you mean by “memoirs of events don’t sound the same if written well”?
I keep thinking I should revisit Maus since the last time I read it was nearly a decade ago! I remember that it totally opened new doors in my mind, because of the combination of medium and story; I wonder if it would still have that impact on me now.
What I meant is what I think other commenters here have stated, especially about character studies and making the work unique. As a reader, I don’t know very much about the Cultural Revolution which makes me think more memoirs should be done about it. When I re-read your motives, I think #3 can and will be achieved by you.
Thank you for the support, Simone. 🙂 Wanting to tell more people about the Cultural Revolution is definitely part of my motives (and it’s really important to my family), as well as #3!
The Memoirs that I’ve enjoyed I’ve enjoyed because the premise is somewhat unique, yet the writing shows the universiality of certain experiences. For instance, in Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy is writing about having cancer in her jaw and dealing with the facial deformity caused by having part of her jaw removed. However, her struggles with self-esteem and feeling ugly/out of place are universal. The level of writing is superior, and the time she spends extracting unique, minute details and throwing them against a broader canvas is well spent. I also liked Persepolis because of what the format added to the story (especially the use of shadows). I love the memoir genre, but for it to work for me it has to blend the unique with the universal. It’s a hard balance to hold.
Hi 2blu2btru, thank you for visiting! I hadn’t heard about Grealy’s story (or her book) but it sounds fascinating. I’ll have to check it out sometime in the future. You’re right about good memoirs blending universal and unique themes; I think that’s an important element of fiction, too. We need to be able to relate to the characters and their situations even if we’re not familiar with the specifics of setting, era, and so forth.
One thing I thought of while writing my post — but forgot to mention — is that in my memoir-reading experience, there’s a vast lack of overlap between the memoirs I enjoy while reading and the memoirs I remember after reading. I’ve read many that have taken me on emotional journeys during the reading, but which I’ve promptly forgotten within a year of putting them down. Perhaps your universal/unique balance speaks to that. The ones that are too unique don’t feel familiar enough to me; the ones that are too universal are forgettable.
Lisa, I think we become desinsitized. There is only so much horror and suffering that we can absorb. We have to develop a thicker skin or go crazy with the absolute insanity of what we as humans can and do inflict on one another. So one Holocaust story rocks your world out of orbit. The second one — not so much. And so on. That is why movies and television and books, too, continue to get more graphically horrific and violent. It is the only way we will sit up and pay attention…… So, how do you tell a story like that of your family? It is definitely a worthwhile story to tell, but a challenge indeed. I can’t wait to see you how you do this–and behind you all the way!
Thank you for the cheering-on, Sherry! 🙂
It’s true about being desensitized, though I (and maybe you) don’t think the solution is to up the graphic ante. I’ve seen several films and read a few stories that were obviously out to shock the audience, and even though they were artistically done, I just couldn’t connect with them. I remember reading a Buddhist book once in which the author said we have to open our hearts to hurt, and then get hurt, and then open our hearts again, and get hurt again, and so on. I think that’s where I stand on desensitization: we have to fight it and allow ourselves to be sensitive and hurt all the time. This might be connected to my feeling that so many memoirs sound like other memoirs. There is a challenge in trying to retell atrocities that everyone already knows, in a way that cuts through the desensitization and makes them freshly appalling. That’s a good thing to remember in my project, actually: how can I make the good and bad things seem really real, even after someone’s already heard this kind of story many times?
Heavens no, Lisa! Please don’t “up the graphic ante”:) The book, Mao’s Last Dancer, that I read a few months ago, was a fascinating bio/memoir. It took place during the Cultural Revolution, and there was much suffering (mainly absolute poverty), and scary moments, certainly threats of violence, but no actual violence. The characters were will drawn and it was easy to get into the skin of these people. I’m sure it isn’t the best memoir in print, but I learned from it, and I will probably remember it.
I’ll probably have to pick up Mao’s Last Dancer at some point! I’ve heard a lot about the book and the film. I’ve been reading up about the Cultural Revolution for the past week and it really was a crazy time, very hard to imagine since it was only just in the 60s, and even harder to imagine in the context of my parents’ adolescence.
To answer your question, I am an extremely emotional person. Some people use that phrase as an insult, but I mean that my own feelings about life are always at my surface and very accessible when I hear, read or watch personal stories about other peoples lives. I always react to the truth in a story and remember its basic facts and its essence, even though I may not always remember the individual piece I found the truth in, as a work of art.
What I hear you saying is that you want your story to be an accessible and powerful work of art. I think all artists who are dedicated to their work want this. Try too hard, and the trying lingers on the surface of the work, getting in the way of its potential to resonate. I’m not sure that any artist attempting a serious work tries too little, but I have had the experience of being so burned out from trying so hard, that I leave the work before it’s done. I’ve been working (with the help of your feedback) on the importance how small details can express volumes about who a character is and how they see life.
I know that you are writing about real people and not constructing characters, but have you written out their personality outlines as if they were? Have you examined their emotions and their reactions as if you were in family therapy with them and it was necessary to really understand how they each experience life internally? Through this, you may discover small but powerful details that help make the story more accessible to the reader.
Lately, I’ve realized that I’ve underestimated the importance of feeling comfort in my writing process. If I can calm down and show the story I know on the page, I tell it much better. Thanks for taking us on this journey with you. I’m in your corner, and like Sherry, I can’t wait to see how you do this!
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment, Ré.
I love what you said about “I always react to the truth in a story and remember its basic facts and its essence, even though I may not always remember the individual piece I found the truth in, as a work of art.” That’s true — I do remember little truths I’ve picked up here and there in different books. I think I’m an emotional person too (and my mom often tells me I’m too sensitive), but I often surprise myself by feeling really distant from things I think should move me. I’m not sure whether that’s a self-protective move or what.
I also really appreciate “Try too hard, and the trying lingers on the surface of the work.” Yes. I try to remind myself of this all the time, and I have a lot of saved quotes from famous artists that speak to this same point. It’s funny, but I noticed the same thing the other day while I was (indoor) rock climbing. I tried several times and kept going into panic mode, and then finally I remembered that it’s a safe environment and I’m not going to die. Then, even though I didn’t climb any higher than I had during the previous attempts, I felt a lot calmer and more clear-headed and was able to actually assess my movements and hear what my body was telling me — and I enjoyed the climbing more!
Your suggestion to write out my family as characters is a really good one. I will keep this in mind when I get to that stage of the writing. 🙂
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