Can memoir help us find our true selves?

Have you noticed self-help gurus and pop psychology will tell us to look forward into the “windshield” of our future and not the “rear-view mirror” of our past. However, sometimes there is a need to reconcile our past with the present. The discovery may come from examining our own or our family’s history or ancestral past. But role, if any, do our ancestors deeds and circumstances shape our life and identity?

In the memoir, A Murder in Madera, author Helene Stapinski seeks to unravel a century-old family mystery. Since childhood, Stapinski has heard lurid tales about her great-great-grandmother, Madera resident, Vita Gallitelli. Stories of Vita paint a picture of a “loose” woman and murderess who eventually flees to America. Lacking facts in the family’s oral history leads Stapinski to devise her own narrative: Vita hatched a plan to come to America to evade justice for a killing, probably the result of a card game gone wrong. Her quest for the truth, the basis for her book, serves also as a powerful memoir theme as well.

Tragedy seems to follow Vita. After boarding a ship in Naples, Italy, and before arriving at Ellis Island, she finds one of her sons has disappeared. Later in life, Vita is murdered in Jersey City. Was this payback for her treacherous ways?

As a journalist with her own small children, Stapinski’s incessant curiosity and nagging questions about her ancestor leads her on a decades-long quest, as she finds out that her grandmother is not the murderous family matriarch she is believed to be.

At the heart of her exhaustive research are Stapinski’s musings about the possibility a criminal gene exists in her family’s DNA. Adding to this suspicion are the antics of her more contemporary relatives, known for their penchant for “five-fingered discounts.” Confirming her worst fears, Stapinski stumbles upon a Norwegian study which identifies a gene associated with violence and criminal behavior. Could this “bad seed” be passed down to her own children?

Truth and self-discovery

After multiple trips to Italy, and despite reluctant relatives and a scarcity of information, the truth is finally extrapolated from the dusty records recovered in an Italian Medieval village.

What is unveiled is more surprising and enlightening than the long-told tale. Life under the labor brokers or padrones and the harsh conditions in Southern Italy forged her ancestors’ survival skills. Trying to feed his starving family, Vita’s husband gets into a dispute with a wealthy landowner after he is attempting to steal fruit on his land.

The love of Vita’s life, as punishment for his crime, languishes in prison. To feed herself and her children, Vita becomes the mistress of wealthy padrone. She bears a number of his children, one of which is Stapinski’s ancestors. The perceived family paradigm has fallen on its face.

A similar theme in author Prince Shakur’s memoir When They Tell You to Be Good. What has shaped his story and becomes part of his memoir’s theme is revealing what he calls “foundational lies.” This, he explains, is anything we have been told and believed but later found to be untrue through the course of our lives. (I challenge his use of the word “lie” as it implies intentional deception.) Unlike Stapinski, the ghosts are in his own upbringing, not those of his ancestors, challenging the person he will became as an adult.

Rejection of cultural and family mores

Many of us recognize something we were brought up believing as truth and later reject. This can mean being told “you’re just like your father/mother,” And the inevitable conclusion: “You’re going to end up just like him/her.” This is often used to reinforce a negative trait in our character. Sometimes we feel obliged to disprove what we have been told. Shakur, a Jamaican native, was brought up with stereotypical male and female roles and taught specific behaviors required of a “real” man or woman. He rejects narrow traditional stereotypes, as he comes of age in a decade where these roles have blurred and redefined.

Uncovering what Shakur calls “foundational lies” in all its variations is a compelling memoir theme. Our story is typically not “point A to point B,” but rather all the deviations from that path we took to find out who we are as we record our story. As we begin the process of reflection and writing a certain magic unfolds. Our lives, with all the mysteries and discoveries, begins its unveiling.