Should You Write Your Memoir?

If you told me six years ago that I’d publish a memoir, I would’ve laughed in your face.
Sure, I was a writer.
Sure, I had stories.
But a memoir? That felt totally self-aggrandizing.

Memoirs were written by those who had earned the right, either through age or by surviving epic, unimaginable hardships like addiction, abuse, or being shot simply for going to school in a country where such things happen.

I was a 40-something, first-generation Iraqi immigrant who grew up in the American South — constantly navigating between two cultures, always feeling a little out of place, and forever correcting the pronunciation of my name. I had a relatively privileged upbringing: a roof over my head, loving parents, and none of the big-ticket traumas that make people gasp at book readings. So why would anyone outside my circle of friends and family want to read about me?

**And on the subject of pronunciation, it’s MEM-WARRR, never MEM-WAH (the original French) to further avoid pretentiousness.

So, five years ago, when my very first book was published — and it was a comic memoir, no less- it took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that it came from me.

As the title pretty much spells out, “The Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit In (Skyhorse Publishing)” is my story of being “The Other” in America, feeling like a fish out of water…