The accuracy of memoir, for centuries the sport of affluent white men, became of grave concern around the time that women, non-whites, and the poor stopped dipping mops into buckets long enough to dip quills into inkpots. Perhaps it’s no coincidence, then, that the most democratic of nonfiction genres-memoir, in which any citizen might be the ultimate authority on her own experience-is the one most scrutinized for veracity. Meanwhile, a white male news anchor’s inflated battlefield tales are piped, unchecked, into millions of living rooms amid network negotiations for a multimillion-dollar contract renewal. Today in America, for instance, a woman who indicts a celebrity for rape is accused of seeking money and attention a dark-skinned man who insists he’s minding his own business is wrestled to the ground by police officers a young diner cook who blogs about her missing teeth receives death threats. In any social order, you will know the powerful by who is believed and the subjugated by who is doubted. Is it just coincidence that we began to worry about truth in memoir just as long-silenced classes began to tell their stories?
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