What should you tell? What should you leave out? These used to be the most important questions for memoirists and for writers of all genres. However, I have come to believe that we are entering a new era where the boundaries of realism are being pushed to the limits by … Read More
Tag: truth
“The perennial question of motherhood, Eloise thought, was how honest to be.”
“But we did not feel as if anything we said was a lie. We both believed that the real lie was told by our present unworthy circumstances.”
The “truth” looms large in Tobias Wolff’s memoir A Boy’s Life. He tells us, for example, how he hijacked the school application process by creating fake transcripts and letters of recommendations when he applied to schools out East. He describes two types of truth – things he knew were true, … Read More
“They had built the entire foundation of their country on isolationism and wanting to kill Americans and South Koreans, yet they needed to learn English and feed their children with foreign money.”
When Suki Kim’s wrote about the six months she was as a teacher in North Korea, she was haunted by the idea that her book might lead to the punishment or even the death of her former students, who could be punished for knowing too much about the world. For … Read More