To Tell the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth?

As I record memories from my life, I face a dilemma. If I decide to rework the manuscript for publication, the dilemma will get worse. Should I tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or should I gloss over situations and events that may embarrass others? Unfortunately, this is a dilemma that everyone who writes a memoir must struggle with.

I’m not talking about making stuff up or leaving out details that would mislead the reader—both of which I believe are unethical in nonfiction. It’s more a question of blurring identity—changing names (or not using them at all) to protect the innocent and the guilty.

The problem is that it doesn’t always work.

In the photo at the head of this post, my husband is pretending to have been caught by the East German border guards. Roland’s face is hidden, but his body shape and white hair are familiar to anyone who knows him well. In the same way, I could try to make people anonymous by leaving out their names, but unless I bend the truth, which I believe is unethical in a memoir, people who know them will recognize them from the circumstances.

I attended a memoir-writing workshop several years back with a presenter who had painted a very unflattering picture of the people in her family. She knew they would be hurt and the memoir might create a breach that would never heal. But she felt the story needed to be told, and she was willing to risk the hurt and the breach to tell it. That was her response to a personal question we all must decide for ourselves.

I’m not worried about my own family, but I have had situations in my life where co-workers and so-called friends did things they would not like to see in print. If I prepare my memoir for publication, I’ll have to decide how important those incidents are to the theme. If they aren’t necessary, I’ll leave them out. But if they are, then changing names or using none at all might be the only option that feels right.

But it’s a dilemma.

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I took the photo in 2016 when we were visiting the Berlin Wall.