Reading Gary Shteyngart's Little Failure made me question how difficult it would be for me to write a memoir of my own. I considered many of the possible challenges that he could have faced as I was reading through it and marveled at the difficulties he did admit to. If I were to write a memoir of my childhood and adolescence I believe it would be difficult for me to extract memories from my childhood because of how long ago they may have been. Not only that, but my memories have been distorted by years of emotional stress and intake of newer information. I don't believe I would be able to accurately depict how I felt at the time or properly connect my memories to each other in a sequential order that makes sense.
His father even requested that he leave out certain pieces of information to the story which could be damaging to the family's reputation. This censorship would cause some heavy conflict with my freedom of expression. This was also an issue for Gloria Watkins in "Class and the politics of writing". I think the biggest challenge would be writing about my family without hurting them or bringing up unnecessary drama. However, I do feel like creating a memoir would be a great form of release and may even get answers to decade-old questions. I applaud Gary Shteyngart for finding the strength to create a memoir of his life.
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