Person on the Page

I first read Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir The Woman Warrior when I was a graduate student. At that time, something important struck me about Kingston’s message. The first chapter opens with the words of the author’s mother: “You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you.”

Immediately following these words, Kingston reveals to readers what her mother told her: “In China your father had a sister who killed herself.  She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born.”  

Kingston then explains that her aunt brought shame upon the family by becoming pregnant after her husband had been away in America for a few years and that, after giving birth, she drowned herself and her child. 

By prefacing the aunt’s story with the revelation that she was forbidden to tell it, Kingston makes the fact that she is defying her mother’s wish impossible to overlook.  

The mother’s instruction reminded me of my own mother’s often repeated warnings regarding our family’s secrets: Be quiet. Don’t tell. Nice people don’t talk about these things.  Nice girls do not talk. Pretend it is not happening. To be a good daughter, I had to remain silent.

And for the most part, I have.  I have written about my childhood experiences, trying to put the unspeakable into words, into images, into messages that might help to free me of their debilitating effects and possibly to benefit others. I am proud of the quality of some of the writing.  But I have struggled with the idea of publishing it.  I used to tell myself that I would wait until my mother died to publish. But she died a few years ago, and I still struggle. 

Of course, many memoirists write about what their parents wish they wouldn’t. Joy Castro’s book Family Trouble includes the recollections of several memoirists who have done just that. Robin Hemley, author of Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness, for instance, recalls his mother’s reaction to his intention to write a memoir about his sister’s schizophrenia and her death from a prescription overdose at age twenty-five. His mother told him to write the story as fiction.  He wrote it as memoir, despite his mother’s objection.  An act of defiance.

Author of Fun Home, Allison Bechdel recalls that her mother did not try to stop her from writing her memoir about her father. Nevertheless, Bechdel reflects, “I know I hurt her by writing this book. . . .  I do feel that I robbed my mother by writing it.” 

Shortly after Christina Crawford’s memoir Mommie Dearest was released in 1978, I was in a bookstore with my mother where the soon-to-be runaway best seller was prominently displayed. My mother pointed to the book and then at me and said, “How dare a daughter do such a thing!  How dare she bad-mouth her mother!” She looked at me in warning, a look that said, Don’t you dare do that. Don’t ever tell.

So I have struggled, feeling that my experiences are my story to tell and that I have a right, and at times a need, to tell them.  But I have also felt less than right about telling.  I have encouraged others to write about their experiences of child abuse, and I have defended those who have defied their parents to do so.  But I have not yet come to any resolve about my own writing. 

Writing in retrospect about the publication of Fun House, Bechdel observes,

Now I know that no matter how responsible you try to be in writing about another person, there’s something inherently hostile in the act. You’re violating their subjectvity.  I thought I could write about my family without hurting anyone, but I was wrong. I will probably do it again. And that’s just an uncomfortable fact about myself that I have to live with.

Uncomfortable indeed.  But worth the discomfort?

What if your mother tells you not to write about the family and its secrets?  Is it your story to tell?  How might it free you or heal you to tell it? 

What price might you pay for telling?