Week 5: Too Much or Not Enough?

 When it comes to fluidity in memoirs, it can be both good and bad. From the article, I feel like fluidity kind of means that you can use all of the differences about yourself for the purpose of writing a memoir. "There is, after all, a fluidity between who we were to other people, who we thought we were, who we think we were, and who we think we are now. And many contemporary memoirists confront this fluidity, either indirectly, or by personifying it, making it the nexus of their stories." This quote from the article is what really made me feel this way and think this way about the meaning of fluidity. As people go to write their memoirs, they will be choosing which persona they want to put into the stories they are telling. The personas that are created by not only us, but those around us, are what allows us to even have memoirs. Everyone sees a different side of every person. My parents see me and see a different side of me than my friends do, etc. We must make the choice of who we want to write about in our memoirs. Which persona do we pick? Do we use the self that only we ourselves know? Do we choose the self that our friends see? Do we create a mixture of each?

The memoir I chose is called Spilled Milk. I remember reading it about three years ago and it is actually what made me start to think about social work as a career choice. The book is about a child who is being abused at home. She makes an anonymous call to social services in hopes that it will get her help, but soon realizes it is going to take a lot more than that. The writer uses a fake name and tells the story under that alias. It is a true story so she is telling us a real event or events that occurred in her life. I think this shows that fluidity in memoirs does matter and can be used. The author had to choose which role she wanted to play, who she wanted to portray herself as in her story about her life.

The author goes into detail about the abuse she endured as well as how broken the system is. Social services is so insanely overworked and understaffed, which creates stories such as these ones. Children are swept under the rug and ultimately live lives of abuse and torture due to the lack of dependable services like foster care. The author showcases these issues throughout her stories of her life. It gives you a first hand look at how scary and awful it can really be for abused children, even when they are trying to reach out for help. It had to be so hard for the author to recount these events, but I am sure she did it to help others.

I read the book years ago on my kindle, so I don't really have a way to link you right to the story. However, I will add a link to the GoodReads page, you can read about the book and choose if you'd like to purchase it or not. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18858489-spilled-milk