The desire to confide, to be seen, is a universal human one; personal narrative is a way of reaping art from that desire. But only some people are taught that their lives are worthy of the endeavor.
During her 15 years teaching nonfiction, Melissa Febos listened to students criticize and dismiss their own projects as "navel-gazing." Many had internalized the popular backlash against memoir as a debased form: clickbait, self-absorbed, a kind of narcissist's public therapy pursued in lieu of writing Big Important Novels.
Febos noticed a pattern. The students most inhibited by these inner voices of doubt were not the straight white men. They were women. They were queer. They were people of color.
