How one author balanced accuracy with fairness in his memoir

Memoirs aren’t written in a vacuum, and writers often have to balance their need to tell a story with a sensitivity toward some of the “characters” that appear within.

That balance grows trickier when the topic of the memoir is surviving a series of traumas (childhood eating disorders, an adulthood gambling addiction, and more).

For author Kiese Laymon, that meant accurately depicting and also defending his mother, who battled her own demons while raising him.

Laymon specifically doesn’t want to directly attribute his own future demons — which make up the subject of his memoir, Heavy — to his mother, though he can't deny the link between her trauma and his own.

Listen to how he tackled this challenge in an interview with Weekend Edition’s Scott Simon below, or head to NPR’s website to read a transcript.