“Bearing Witness requires honesty, even when it is uncomfortable.” Photojournalist Juan Arredondo wrote this in an article in the Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2026, about the sometimes deadly risks journalists take to document the stories of real people in the midst of real times. Their work brings home the reality of people’s lives for history’s sake, for culture’s sake, for empathy and understanding’s sake. We all need to read their stories to open our minds, expand our knowledge and perspectives for the benefit of humanity. Life-writing and memoir are a way each of us can document history and culture as well as build understanding and empathy. Fortunately, capturing our life stories is not usually a risky endeavor!
I recently attended a program where a very elderly survivor of the Hiroshima bombing talked about her experience, which her family was finally able to write down and publish as Kazuko: Sixth Grade in WWII Hiroshima (by Kazuko Blake/Sandra Vega). She was fortunate to have had parents who prepared well for war emergencies and that she had access to medical care. Others were not so lucky, but this was her individual experience worth capturing in writing – and a rare memoir as many Japanese would not tell their stories. A related important historical memoir is The Block Manager, where Judy Mundle wrote the story of her friend whose family was sent to the Rohwer, Arkansas, internment camp. Then, right after the war, she followed her husband to his family home in Hiroshima and survived the aftermath.
Vivian Gibson wrote The Last Children of Mill Creek about her family’s life in a thriving black community in St. Louis, before the neighborhood was demolished for the sake of urban renewal. Many years later that area was finally built up. This book became a little famous, with Gibson being asked to present and join panel discussions about this forgotten history. The Missouri History Museum currently has an exhibit about this.
Terry Mulligan wrote Sugar Hill: Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem, which is not just her family’s experience of living there during its heyday. They were part of the black history and culture of Harlem that Terry so beautifully captured.
Dania Rosa Nasca wrote Lights Out: A Cuban Memoir about her family’s life during and after the rise of Fidel Castro. They escaped on a U.S. sponsored Freedom Flight.
My own family history books include my mother’s published Cherry Blossoms in Twilight memoir which documents her experience of surviving WWII while living near Tokyo. My father’s family history book documents the lives and culture of his Dutch family living in northern Netherlands and their immigration to the Chicago area back in the early 1900s—fascinating stories of long ago. We have the stories and recipes of my husband’s rural Tennessee family. I also put together a Korean War combat medic’s eye-opening stories from the front lines (and beyond) of that war, published as Battlefield Doc by William “Doc” Anderson.
When you write your or a family member’s stories, be sure to capture the everyday details of what life was like at the time, because those times are now history. You are in charge of documenting it like no history book can.
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