Can we stop assuming every non-fiction book needs to be 'balanced'?

I was at a club meeting last Wednesday where this guy Mark said a memoir about growing up in poverty was 'too one-sided' because it didn't talk about the charity work in the area. It hit me that we expect books to cover every angle when sometimes a person's raw experience is the whole point. Why does a personal story need to give equal time to the 'other side' of someone's own life?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryan_stone17d ago

That Mark guy needs to sit this one out for a while. A memoir isn't a textbook where you gotta list pros and cons, it's someone telling you what their life actually felt like.

nancy_owens17d ago

Oh man, the "too one-sided" thing gets me every time. lol. That Mark guy sounds like he needs to sit down. Like, I remember I read this book about a kid who survived a cult and someone in my book club was like "but what about the nice community potlucks?" and I was like okay, did you miss the part where they were locked in a basement for three years? lmao. A memoir isn't a debate, it's a story. Not everything needs to have a footnote saying "but also some people think it wasn't that bad.