I always begin my “How to Write Your Memoirs” classes by asking, “Why do you want to do this?” No one has ever answered the question like novelist Pat Conroy does in this collection of essays about writing memoirs. Conroy said that he was surprised that when he talked with his sisters and brothers about what it was like to grow up in their family, they remembered “almost nothing.” He doesn’t know why some people remember things and others do not, but he feels that those who are the “designated rememberers” should do the important work of telling the truth.
Conroy, Pat. Why We Write about Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature, edited by Meredith Maran. Plume, 2016, p. 40.