experiences. Probably, I pictured a man. What I did not consider were any of the historical examples of politicized personal writing (is there any other kind?) that were often part of a long-standing tradition of testimony, much of which I’d read, like Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The Diary of a Young Girl, Red Azalea, and Night. Not to m

means comprehensive even in this task. I have found that a fulfilling writing life is one in which the creative process merges with the other necessary processes of good living, which only the individual can define.

Hesse, Bukowski, Kerouac, Miller, Hemingway, Mailer, et al.

and for that, we need to hear their stories. I’ll say it again, because it bears repeating: the resistance to memoirs about trauma is always in part—and often nothing but—a resistance to movements for social justice.

“It is joy to be hidden and disaster not to be found.”

Cruelty rarely makes for good writing. It can be pleasurable sometimes, both to write and to read, but it is a cheap pleasure. People often rely on cruelty for humor, but again, the prose and people I find funniest

But you know what? Tons of people want to read about the comprehensive mindfuck of adolescent girlhood under patriarchy.

others. There is no pain in my life that has not been given value by the alchemy of creative attention.

The history of trauma and its stories has always been politicized. Consider the case of hysteria, that mysterious illness that captivated male doctors from antiquity until the beginning of the twentieth century.