Reported memoir: a case study
A close reading of Lyz Lenz's THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE shows us the components and cadence of reported memoir
Two weeks ago, I taught a class for industry guru Jane Friedman on hybrid memoir. I took participants through two hybrid memoir case studies: Alex Marzano-Lesnevich’s THE FACT OF A BODY: A murder and a memoir and Vanessa Chakour’s forthcoming EARTHLY BODIES: Embracing Animal Nature.1 We looked at the opening chapters of both books to understand how the books were structured and whether or not there were organizing principles at play. What timeline did the author start the book in: the present narrative, the past? Was the opening paragraph a personal anecdote or a historical fact? Were there any bonus materials such as quotations or transcripts that set an expectation for what was to follow?
Close reading of this kind is a little bit like cooking. You have a list of ingredients at your disposal, but to understand what ingredient to use when, and in what quantity, it’s helpful to watch someone else cook.
Today we’re going to watch how author, journalist and Substack phenom
Lenz makes use of narrative ingredients to form her cohesive, impactful, and deeply readable reported memoir, THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE: How I ended my marriage and started my life. While I’ll be calling Lyz’s book a “reported memoir” in this post, it also falls into the category of “hybrid memoir.” Hybrid memoir, what’s that?If you’ve taken memoir classes with me, you know I feel that all memoir must go beyond the major-thing-that-happened-to-you-that-one-time to form a connection with the reader; to inspire or astound or educate them, in addition to shocking them or tugging at their heartstrings.
While Lyz certainly could have written about the big bad thing that happened to her one time (after decades of being gaslit, she up and left her husband and demanded 50/50 custody of their children) but by adding research, statistics, interviews with other women and personal anecdote to her own narrative, she created a movement instead of just a memoir. “This American Ex-Wife” interrogates the state of heterosexual marriages nationally: not just Lyz’s union, everyone’s. It’s this added layering that makes the book a reported memoir, a subgenre of memoir that some people call “Hybrid Memoir.” Let’s pause here for definitions:
Going forward, I’ll refer to Lyz’s book as “reported memoir” because reported is what it is. Lyz structured the book with the brain of a journalist and the heart of a memoirist. I highly, highly recommend This American Ex-Wife if you haven’t read it yet!
We’ll now breakdown the entire first chapter of “This American Ex-Wife” to understand what narrative ingredients Lyz is using and in what amount. If you’re the kind of writer who struggles with intuiting when to move out of flashback to the present narrative or how to drop research into a story without the research feeling clunky or “try-hard,” I think you’ll find this paragraph-by-paragraph breakdown helpful and instructive. It’s a method of close reading sure to improve the way you approach structure and organizing principles in your own nonfiction projects.
Here we go!
Analysis of the first chapter of THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE— a reported memoir
