Family History, Secrets, and Universal Truths in Creative Nonfiction

By Lopa Banerjee
All great memoir and nonfiction works begin with the writer’s impulse to tell a true story with honesty, passion, and urgency. It may be a story that involves the lives of immediate others who surround him, but the writer is successful after unfolding the story to his audience only if and when the purpose is to bring forward universal truth, to evoke universal emotions where the family is the nucleus.