In today’s just released Fall Reading Guide issue of Just Out, contributor and columnist Daniel Borgen lists Debra Gwartney’s memoir Live Through This as a personal favorite. Gwartney, an assistant professor at Portland State University and accomplished writer, was gracious enough to answer a few questions for Borgen’s review. The entirety of the interview follows.

Daniel Borgen: In what ways is memoir–as a genre–evolving within the larger body of literature? Is it gaining acceptance as a viable form or do the likes of James Frey set authors back a decade or two?
Debra Gwartney: This is a very complicated question, worth many pages of discussion. In my opinion, the memoir has been a viable and widely accepted genre for a long, long time. Perhaps the “modern” memoir began with Frank Conroy’s masterpiece, Stop-Time, followed by books such as Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club, and so many other examples of books that have defined the genre. In my opinion, James Frey (and his ilk) haven’t hurt memoir writing, at least not in the long run. In fact maybe he, in particular, actually brought attention to memoir–it wasn’t positive attention but it certainly was attention, and suddenly readers were talking about memoir writing (and reading!) as they hadn’t before. In the meantime, gorgeous memoirs–full of insight and depth–continue to be published and cherished by readers.

DB: It must have been challenging to have those closest to you–your family–read the book in its entirety. How did your daughters react to your prose? How did you react to seeing it in print? How does it feel to share your story time and time again?
DG: My four daughters knew all along that I was working on a book, of course, and though I think they were a bit nervous about what was cooking at my desk, they offered much support and blessing. When I was finished with the manuscript, and it had been accepted for publication, I gave it to my daughters to read and we then had several long, difficult, loving, stressful conversations about what was on those pages. I did some rewriting based on our talks. None of us could have predicted the explosive intensity of the actual publication. Much of what transpired was exciting; other aspects of having the book out in the world were tough. In the end, I’m still glad it’s in readers hands, and I’m grateful to the many people who’ve written to me about their responses to our story.

DB: Clearly the book is about recounting you and your daughters’ harrowing experiences. With that in mind, how did you consider audience? What, if anything, do you hope readers glean from your work?
DG: I didn’t really think about audience as I was writing. My central aim was to approach the subject as honestly as I could, to “self-excavate,” as Vivian Gornick talks about in her book, The Situation and the Story. The parameters of memoir require, in my view, a kind of ruthless examination of one’s own motivations and self-deceptions. I’m not professing to have unearthing the entirety of my own hidden motives, but I got as deep into the effort as I could manage at the time.
It was never my purpose to expose or reveal the subculture of kids on the streets, and I don’t describe that subculture much in the book because I was never in it–it was always quite far away from me. I have heard from many parents whose own children have left, and I’ve come to believe that not enough has been written about this situation (between 1.6 and 3 million kids run from home each year–so it is a significant social problem), especially from the point of view of the parents.

DB: There’s a unique, painful chord the subject of runaways (for lack of a better general term) strikes within the gay community. Obviously there are very different reasons for that–and it’s sort of challenging to compare the two disparate subjects. That said: there’s definitely a familiarity to which the gay community can relate–a separation from society, from those we love the most, etc. How do you feel about that? Thoughts?
DG: I have to say that post-publication (of my book) and now going around the country talking to other parents and social workers/counselors who work extensively with runaway youth, I’ve discovered that a whole lot of kids leave home initially because of their parents’ dismay, disappointment, shock (whatever emotion comes up) over the child’s growing awareness of his or her sexuality. That wasn’t my particular intolerance–the tensions between my daughters and me had more to do with going to school, their clothing, their hair, things that now seem superficial but at the time were disturbing to me. Other parents, I guess, have trouble accepting that their children are gay. Intolerance is intolerance, though, isn’t it? And when parents and children stop communicating–as we’d stopped–eventually something has to break. In our case, it was terribly painful and sad, that break, and it’s taken an astonishingly long time to find our way to each other again. I so sympathize with any family in the throes of this kind of strain–and I wish them the best in the healing process.