I stumbled upon an article called The Difficulties of Writing a Cross-Border Memoir in Today’s World by Jean Guerrero, author of a cross-border memoir called Crux. She talks about her Mexican immigrant father and how he spent his life negotiating all kinds of borders, not just physical ones like Trump’s wall.
“One of the biggest challenges of writing memoir is making our personal stories relevant to the world around us without letting them be overtaken by the headlines. Current events are always changing. As a journalist who covers immigration, I have a front-row seat to the rapidfire metamorphosis of the border region. What makes the average book more valuable than the average news story is its longer lifespan; it speaks to something unchanging in the species.”
She explains the challenges of writing memoir as very often headlines try to punctuate the narrative and this is dangerous as headlines are only symptomatic of the past. A memoir picks up the pieces of individual lives and throws light on the broader aspects of humanity.
Read the essay.
