by Anika Fajardo

Memoir revolves around ourselves and our families. But writing about these subjects can be a difficult undertaking, both emotionally and technically. The things we enjoy about reading personal stories—the gritty, unvarnished truth of someone’s life—are also the things that can hold us back as writers of creative nonfiction. Our personal bias, self-censorship, and fear often interfere with telling the truth in our stories.

During my time last year in The Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series, I was fortunate to work with many wonderful writers, including Dinah Lenney, an author, instructor, book reviewer, and actor who writes candidly about her father’s high-profile murder in her memoir Bigger Than Life. During her residency at the Loft, Dinah challenged me to write about my former stepfamily. I responded to the charge with a knee-jerk “No way!” My stepfamily, particularly my stepfather, was part of a dark and buried past. I believed that they had nothing to do with the story I wanted to tell. I didn’t think they deserved to have the time and words wasted on them. And so I resisted writing about them for quite a while.

Dinah urged me to explore point of view when telling a difficult story. Most personal stories are told in first person, but the other points of view (second and third person) can also help a writer tell his or her own history. Point of view is one of the powerful tools in your writer’s toolbox. Exploring the point of view through which you are telling a personal narrative can help you get past the internal censors and emotional roadblocks.

Most of my creative nonfiction has been written in the first person. Writing from the first person can be very useful to get to the meat of the story, to connect with yourself as the narrator and your experiences. However, the first person can also hold writers back. When we write about ourselves and our families from the first-person perspective, we get a certain bias. It’s difficult to say either very good or very bad things about yourself from the first person. It’s difficult to explore the emotions and reactions of those around you. The “I” point of view can make you self-conscious and tentative:

Third person, the “he” or “she” point of view, is the perspective often used in fiction but less commonly in memoir or personal narrative. And for obvious reasons. Third-person accounts about events that happened to the author can be disconcerting and feel disingenuous. But third person can also bring out some deeper issues in your writing and allow you access to the imagined inner thoughts of those around you.

Second person, the “you” point of view, is the least commonly used point of view. This is understandable because reading a narrative about “you” can be irritating, confusing, and feel condescending if not done purposefully and judiciously. Many writers use second person, however, to make the story more immediate and personal, or to transport the reader into the narrator’s shoes. You hated living with your stepfamily, hated Mike. It hadn’t been your idea and you never liked things that weren’t your idea. Being part of that family was like role playing for you. You never fully engaged, were always waiting for curtain call. In the five years you lived with this assortment of people others called your new family, you had never bonded, never cared for them, never even respected them, did you?

I hated living with my stepfamily, hated Mike. It hadn’t been my idea and I’ve never liked things that weren’t my idea. Being part of that family was like role playing for me. I never fully engaged, was always waiting for curtain call. In the five years I lived with this assortment of people others called my new family, I had never bonded, never cared for them, never even respected them.

When I finally took on Dinah’s challenge and tackled the story of my stepfamily, I did so in the second person. Switching the perspective from which I told the account also gave me a different perspective on my life in general. As I told my story in the second person—as if it had happened to someone else—I was able to look at the experience from a new angle, to find the heart of what the story meant. My stepfamily, it turned out, was an integral part of my history, an integral part of my life and memory, and shaped me and molded me as much as any positive experience. To see that, I just needed a different point of view.

Anika Fajardo is a writer and librarian living in Minneapolis. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Dos Passos Review, Minnetonka Review, and Talking Stick. She was a winner of the Loft’s Mentor Series in Creative Nonfiction in 2009–2010.