There’s a woman in my book club who dislikes memoirs. She finds them self-indulgent. Why would anyone be interested in someone else’s life unless they’re a celebrity? What’s the point of going back into your life and rehashing old stories? Does anyone really care?

These are some of her arguments.

Memoir is one of the most misunderstood genres of literature. And one of the biggest myths about memoir, if you are writing—or thinking about writing—one, is that it is simply about you.

That may sound strange. After all, whose life are you writing about?

But your story is only one element of the power of memoir.

I heard a powerful question for writers to ask themselves when writing their memoir:

What is the reader reading to find out? Why would they keep turning the pages?

If you were to ask me what my book is about, I could say it’s about a woman who leaves Belfast in her early twenties, builds an extraordinary life in America, and eventually returns home.

That’s the plot.

On the surface, the reader thinks they are reading to find out what happens when Linda returns to Ireland after living in the United States for forty-four years.

As interesting as that may be, I don’t think that is the real question that keeps the reader turning the pages.

The deeper question is: Can the woman Linda became in America return to the place she came from without becoming the small and invisible woman she used to be?

And underneath that is an even more universal question:

Can any of us ever truly outgrow the life and identity we came from, or do those old versions and imprints of ourselves remain inside us, waiting to be reactivated?

That is what my memoir is really asking the reader to discover as they turn the pages.

They aren’t simply reading a catalog of everything that happened to me. They are reading to discover what happens when any of us are forced to confront the parts of ourselves we thought we had left behind.

Does the Small Life still have power over us?

Can we return to where we came from without becoming who we once were?

Can we finally give ourselves permission to live the larger life we once thought was beyond our reach?

How deep does our perceived transformation go?

They are reading to explore those deeper psychological questions.

Many readers will recognize some version of my Small Life inside themselves. You may not have lived my life, but you may have inherited some of the same messages I got:

Don’t get above yourself.

Don’t make trouble.

You're not good enough to go after that.

Know your place.

And they may be wondering:

What would happen if I stopped living according to those rules?

That, I think, is the real gift of memoir. It takes something you have lived through, something you know intimately, and turns it into something another person can recognize, question, and perhaps learn from.

Your story may be uniquely yours. But the reason someone keeps reading is that, somewhere inside your story, they recognize themselves.