“It’s my version of things…It’s what I saw and felt; it’s not the whole story. But I think I have a right to tell it.”
I am both a firm believer of Maia when she writes this in her article as well as a skeptic of such a blanket philosophy, even as I practice it myself, that it having the right to tell my own story even if it may not be glorious or true or kind of accurate to someone else. But: at what cost? And: who can weigh or judge this truth? Is the writer enough of a judge? Must the reader buy in, and how much? This article makes me think of the podcast too and the anecdote with someone pretending to be an amputee and getting some money from a passerby. Is there really harm done? Again we have to ask the question of who is the judge of the harm, at what cost? I think the difference between someone telling her story ethically and someone perhaps abusing their voice as a writer/speaker like maybe the person in the podcast who wrote the not-so-true-memoir is about disclosure and awareness. How open/communicative is the speaker about their positionality, their subjectivity? I’m wondering though if others feel this kind of communication is necessary for likability and perhaps identifying with a speaker, or if it is more my personal preference.
Ethically, what does the speaker owe us in truth and how do we come to this agreement? Is it when the writer/speaker (using the two interchangeably but maybe that is incorrect) chooses what genre to classify their writing under? Is it when they share an intimate moment with us and bring us into their world, fabricating (or maybe actually creating) a sense of closeness and trust? There probably isn’t just one straight forward answer, but again curious how we all as memoir writers or biographers navigate truths–which types do we put weight in. Emotional truth? The truth of the exact events that happened, in an order, and at a certain time? What constitutes the truths we are revealing in the stories we tell?
“I am both a firm believer of Maia when she writes this in her article as well as a skeptic of such a blanket philosophy,”
— agreed. It’s the general application of this kind of proclamation that bugs me so much… I really feel that so much of this has to be handled on a case-by-case basis, if not subject-by-subject then it at least needs to considered story-by-story. Conditions are context in this conundrum or paradox about whose life – whose story -whose right – whose authority. If all the subjects of my story are long dead, there’s nobody to ask and nobody to offend or violate (unless they left some will saying they didn’t want to be written about???) and nobody to consult or gain consent from. I think memoir and biography always have to begin with some process of “advise and consent” that is informed by the human variables (persons’ feelings) who will have to live with our story….
@Sarah —Another wrinkle I just thought of after reading your response…
What about money?
There may be instances where we may think it’s our story, but what if one of our subjects/characters/humans in the story simply objects to having their story monetized and sold by us? Many people assert the rights to their own life story, and often sell said rights to a particular writer or to publishers… What then?
What happens when we say “it’s our life” and we have the right to write our story about it, but someone in “our story” says we don’t have the right (or rights in this case) to take them out of a/the/their story and include them in our story?
“I am both a firm believer of Maia when she writes this in her article as well as a skeptic of such a blanket philosophy,”
— agreed. It’s the general application of this kind of proclamation that bugs me so much… I really feel that so much of this has to be handled on a case-by-case basis, if not subject-by-subject then it at least needs to considered story-by-story. Conditions are context in this conundrum or paradox about whose life – whose story -whose right – whose authority. If all the subjects of my story are long dead, there’s nobody to ask and nobody to offend or violate (unless they left some will saying they didn’t want to be written about???) and nobody to consult or gain consent from. I think memoir and biography always have to begin with some process of “advise and consent” that is informed by the human variables (persons’ feelings) who will have to live with our story….
@Sarah —Another wrinkle I just thought of after reading your response…
What about money?
There may be instances where we may think it’s our story, but what if one of our subjects/characters/humans in the story simply objects to having their story monetized and sold by us? Many people assert the rights to their own life story, and often sell said rights to a particular writer or to publishers… What then?
What happens when we say “it’s our life” and we have the right to write our story about it, but someone in “our story” says we don’t have the right (or rights in this case) to take them out of a/the/their story and include them in our story?