Memoirs are a well-known form of fiction.

I am currently reading the memoirs of a young hermaphrodite who lived in the mid-1800s for my Sex in Literature and Film class and it made me wonder… If I wrote a memoir would it ever be worth reading? The young man who wrote these memoirs committed suicide when he was 25 years old, a year younger than I am now. His memoirs are as short as his life, covering just a little over a hundred pages and yet his story is compelling. He was raised as a woman, in a boarding house ran by nuns. Herculine Barbin, tells of her young life surrounded by adoring nuns and loving schoolmates. She explains how her body was different from everyone else’s, how it was gangly and straight, while all the other girls were rounded and where they were smooth, Herculine was starting to grow hair. She seems to always have been attracted to women. In the book she describes multiple girls that she had a true passion for. During this time period apparently hermaphrodites were not forced into either sex at birth. The parents would of course raise them as one sex, Herculine was raised as a woman, but as the child reached adulthood they had to make the final choice of whether or not they would live the rest of their life as a man or a woman. Herculine chooses to live her life as a man and in the end cannot adjust to the change. So he commits suicide.

            My life is not so overly dramatic. Were I to write the story of my life what parts would I share? Could I write the story of my childhood, though it is only a vague impression of unhappiness and anger? Would I write the story of my teenage years? They were normal, not spectacular in any way worth sharing. Then again, Barbin’s childhood was not extraordinary either except for the fact that she was a man, and a woman, living as a woman amongst women, who she realized she passionately desired. That is what makes her story compelling, her passion. I need to find that emotion in my life and maybe something worthy enough to be written down will happen. I do not want to live a tragic life. I want my story to be a happy one—and a passionate one. A page-turner from beginning to end.