Week 6: Too Much & Too Little

It is difficult to truly compare the memoirs of “Cousins” and “Growing up in Therapy” because the depth of the two stories is very different.  In reality, the only personal detail the writer of “Cousins” divulges is the fact that they have a cousin and that they lived together for two years.  I understand the premise as having had a fight with the cousin but there is not enough detail to draw me in.  I like to have contextualizing detail in what I read, it doesn’t have to be richly bogged down, but I need context to be drawn in.  I feel like there is nothing I can grab onto and that is frustrating.

Leena Dunham, author of “Growing up with Help,” gives a lot of orienting details.  It is interesting, even if it's not at all relatable to me personally.  Although I cannot see myself in Dunham’s story, I do get a clear picture of the characters and her relationships with them.  There are also dynamics of her life that are shown inadvertently.  When Dunham says that her parents each had their own therapist as well, after saying that her thoughts as a young child were that therapy was “something reserved for people who are crazy,” I begin to see a possible characterization of her parents.  And though she never gives such detail, I get a sense that Dunham is an only child from a privileged background.  Perhaps Dunham gives more description than necessary but I don't get bored or feel the need to dismiss her difficulties.

There is very little description in “Cousins.”  The author establishes the minimalistic character dynamic of “like the older sister that I never had,” but that could take shape in so many different ways.  The only detail I feel is the 1,300-mile distance between the two characters but there is nothing at stake for me so it ultimately doesn't matter.

Truth-telling is the only area, in my opinion, where “Cousins” comes out ahead.  It is the bare detailed nature that makes “Cousins” feel honest and counter to that, it is the richness of Dunham’s details that make her memoir feel dishonest in some respects.  There is a point in Dunham's where I wonder how much is an honest memory of what her young mind thought at the time and how much is being attached to the analysis of the memories as an adult recollecting.  In short, these two memoirs leave me wanting a middle ground.