Why trauma writers lie to us – The market wants uncomplicated stories

As a longtime teacher of memoir writing who closely observes trends in the genre, I’ve recently been thinking of an episode involving a student I worked with in the late 2010s. “F.” had studied with me over several years. At one point, she took a long absence, confiding in me that she’d unearthed some childhood trauma and was taking the time to address it. Eventually, she sent me an essay she’d written during her leave. In it, F. described herself as a child in the care of indifferent adults who had been coerced into sexual acts with persons known to her. The essay contained disturbing details, cutting dialogue, and careful scene work. Overall, it was gripping, horrific — a good story, in narrative terms.

But I didn’t believe it at all. At most, I’d give it a 2% chance of being true.

I didn’t believe this student’s story was true because I’d read it before. A year or two earlier, a student in a workshop — a class in which F. was also enrolled — had written a nearly identical account of her own childhood assault. Her story was profoundly disturbing, a difficult story to get out of my mind. I wasn’t surprised it had affected F. in that way, too. But this was bizarre: F. had coopted her classmate’s story, one she knew I’d read, and claimed it as her own.

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