{"id":14500,"date":"2025-02-28T14:26:44","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T14:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/?p=14500"},"modified":"2025-02-28T14:26:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T14:26:45","slug":"minda-honey-lessons-memoir-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2025\/02\/28\/minda-honey-lessons-memoir-journalists\/","title":{"rendered":"Minda Honey’s lessons from writing a memoir, and advice for journalists finding their voice"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter,<\/em><\/a> delivered every Friday in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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***<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Dear Storyboard community, <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Right now I’m thinking a lot about ensuring the safety of our subjects and our sources. Unless someone feels safe to tell their story, it might not get told at all. <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy has just published a primer on how civil servants can communicate safely and securely with journalists<\/a>, at a moment when both are being targeted by the Trump administration. <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Safety is both physical and psychological, and it applies to telling your own story, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Our digital era has given everyone the tools to tell their own stories \u2014 I believe it’s one reason why memoir and personal essays have become such a diverse and popular genre over the past two decades. But again, these stories won’t get told if we don’t feel safe sharing them. <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Minda Honey on finding her voice through memoir<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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This week I’m thrilled to welcome Minda Honey as a new contributor to Nieman Storyboard, as she digs into the craft of memoir with Edgar Gomez<\/a>, author of the new book “Alligator Tears.”<\/a> <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Honey is the author of the memoir “The Heartbreak Years,”<\/a> and I first discovered her writing when editor Sari Botton<\/a> published her essays at Longreads<\/a>. Last year, she talked with my podcast collaborators at Ursa, Deesha Philyaw and Kiese Laymon<\/a>, about being “shameless” in telling her own story<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I asked her how she came to that specific word in describing her work: <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I really have to give credit to the writer Danielle Buckingham for using the “shameless” framing when discussing my book. She was the first do so.<\/a> I immediately valued the truth Danielle uncovered about my work because I don’t think it’s possible to live free as a woman, especially as a Black woman in America, without embodying a certain degree of shamelessness. To be shameless is to reject the standards set for you by others and live by your own measure. As Audre Lorde writes in “Sister Outsider”<\/a>: \u201cNothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.\u201d Beyonc\u00e9 is such a great example of this because you can literally succeed at every measure set by a society and they will still seek to humble you. You must find peace through self-definition. You must be shameless.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Many of us in the Storyboard community come from traditional journalism, and I also know that some of us (myself included) have struggled with putting our own stories and voices into writing. I asked Minda what advice she would share with journalists who are starting to experiment with memoir: <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Revise where you’re hiding. Memoir and journalism are both about truth-telling. However, memoir is more focused on a personal truth. So when a journalist sits down to revise, they should seek out the places where they find themselves over-relying on research, shoehorning facts in, unspooling someone else’s narrative \u2014 because that’s likely the place where they have something hard and honest to say and are hiding behind the security blanket that is their journalistic training.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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For more on writing personal essays and memoir, check out Storyboard’s full archive of resources<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Subscribe to Storyboard<\/h2>\n \n
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Get insights into the craft of journalism and storytelling in your inbox, delivered on Fridays.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n \n

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Links of Note <\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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\"Paris<\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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