Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family

by
Joy Castro, editor
Published in 2013
by University of Nebraska Press

In this collection of essays edited by Joy Castro, twenty-five memoirists explore the complex personal emotions and literary responsibilities writers must negotiate when revealing private information about their families to the reading public. The essays cover a wide range of topics including adoption, sexuality, grief, illness, and cultural identity by authors such as Faith Adiele, Alison Bechdel, Jill Christman, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Rigoberto González, Robin Hemley, Dinty W. Moore, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Mimi Schwartz. “How family members react is not in your hands,” Castro writes in her introduction. “What is in your hands is the narrative: its fidelity to facts as you recall them, its fair-mindedness, its compassion for the straits in which your family members found themselves, its sincere quest to understand what happened.”