In recent years critics have maligned the "memoir craze" as a self-indulgent diversion where writers (and everyone else) try to outdo one another with the revelation of every facet of their lives--from the most lethally boring minutia available, to the most sordid secrets imaginable. Agents, editors, and publishers change their minds hourly about the genre's status: the memoir's in--oops sorry!--the memoir's out, as if they were peddling shoes at Macy's.

None of these groups seems interested in considering what makes memoirs popular with readers: America is a nation of 250 million voyeurs. Everyone wants to know the private details of other people's business--what goes on behind closed doors. How does my life compare with everyone else's? This explains the explosion in popularity of nonfiction writing in general, and autobiographical writing in particular, with books like The Liar's Club, Angela's Ashes, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius topping bestseller charts. (This same voyeuristic obsession can be extended to tabloid journalism--which today has become almost all journalism, and the proliferation of reality TV and daytime talk shows that delve into the lurid details of ordinary people's lives.)

While on the surface the memoir obsession may seem like just another fad, I believe the reasons for its popularity can be explained by transitions in our society. All of the old ground rules have been cast aside: most of us no longer structure our lives by the tenets of the church; we're separated from the stability of our childhood homes and families. And the careers and material rewards we embraced as the guiding light for all our days, fizzled out when we maxed the credit cards at the same time our employers discovered they could create profit by axing thousands of workers and making half the workforce do twice the amount of work. Even the lucky ones are questioning what to do once they cash in their stock options. So where does that leave us? Millions of people are looking for answers, someone to tell them how to live their lives, and by reading memoirs, we can sample other people's lives, try them on for size and see how they fit.

In short, trends change, but human nature doesn't. We are all in this strange life together, and it helps to have someone to talk to. Maybe your circle of cronies and acquaintances haven't had the experiences you've had, or the experiences you're curious about. Aha! Enter the beauty of autobiographical literature. A memoir can take you into the thoughts and feelings of someone else's life with an honesty that few of your best friends will provide.
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My passion is nonfiction, as I consider reality more fascinating than anything I could create. Like most of my fellow nonfiction writers, I possess an infinite curiosity about the world; this passion for life keeps us going--traveling the globe, looking under rocks, seeking new experiences, gathering data, delving into the psyche of everyone from field hands to heads of state. We report back to readers on our findings, knowing that the best nonfiction narratives enable them to feel like they're living the experience with us. I look at my own life as a laboratory for material, much like the mad scientist who tries his latest concoction on himself. And like the mad scientist, oftentimes the outcome of my experiments may provide empirical knowledge for the observer, but turn me into a freak in the process.

After I had taken on the assignment of writing Waris Dirie's story, Desert Flower, I met her for the first time in New York. I asked her why she wanted to write this book, and she gave me two reasons: 1) Waris wanted to publicize the issue of female genital mutilation and tell the truth about its horrors from her firsthand account and, 2) she wanted to educate the American public about the beauty of Somalia, because she felt that all the Western world knew of her homeland was poverty, drought, famine, and war.

I felt that the first goal was easily attainable. But the second one presented a considerable challenge. As two seemingly unrelated events become fused in a person's mind because they happened at the same time, Waris and Bill Clinton's tribulations became fused in mine. While I was furiously writing Desert Flower, the media storm was breaking over Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. I remember thinking wryly: "If I can put a positive spin on Somalia for American readers, then perhaps when I get through with this book I'll get a job helping the Clinton administration."

Another challenge of writing Desert Flower was in understanding a person who was seemingly the complete opposite of me: a black woman from Somalia who had grown up as a nomad in the desert, worked as a maid in London, then transitioned to lead the glamorous life of an international fashion model and human rights activist. By comparison I was a white woman who had grown up in a strict Baptist household in the swampy Missouri cotton fields, worked in advertising in San Francisco, then transitioned to the decidedly non-glamorous life of a writer and academic. I feared that I would be unable to relate to Waris's life and thus the book's message would ring hollow.

I needn't have worried. After spending over a hundred hours interviewing her, we found out that we had numerous points in common: we were both victims of strict, patriarchal upbringings that left us resentful and angry; we both grew up in the wide open spaces and moved to cities that left us feeling disconnected from nature; we'd both left home as teenagers and spent the rest of our lives searching for a place to fit in; we both viewed the world of business with queasiness and mistrust; and we both shared the same grievances against men that any session of "girl talk" will usually unearth. When I began to write the book, I paid close attention to areas where I felt a special connection to Waris, knowing that these episodes would relate to readers from every culture. To date, Desert Flower has been published in sixteen countries, sold over two million copies, and ranked on the bestseller lists of England, Ireland, Germany, Holland and New Zealand. But my biggest gratification has been comments from readers that tell me they connected with Waris's story like I did: "This extraordinary biography describes in perfect detail her journey through seemingly unconquerable feats that leaves the reader gasping for breath with laughter and having to put the book down because you can't see for the tears."

I employed the same narrative techniques I used in Desert Flower to write my memoir about moving to rural Pennsylvania. In The Birdhouse Chronicles, my husband, Kerby, and I move from Pacific Heights in San Francisco to a ramshackle farmhouse in the midst of an Amish cornpatch in Zion. I use sensory images to make readers feel like they're right there beside us, watching buggies bounce down the dirt road--lanterns swinging in the darkness, canning tomatoes, burying rabbits, catching fireflies, and exorcising spirits from our old house. During the course of the book, we struggle to transform ourselves from frantic city dwellers to unflappable country dwellers.

In the narrative I include a wealth of seemingly mundane daily details to create an old-fashioned sensibility of time--a sensibility that hails from an era when every action was not measured by its cold-cash profitability. The result is a portrait--not only of our lives--but of a way of life that is rapidly vanishing from the American landscape.

Critics have called memoirists every evil adjective that derives from the word "self": self-indulgent, self-centered, self-absorbed, self-obsessed, self ish . But writing a memoir is the antithesis of selfishness. It is the art of offering one's life as a lesson to others, and displaying all one's embarrassing foibles and failures in the process. What's could be less selfish than that?
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Portions of this essay originally appeared in Contemporary Authors.