Family Memoir

Posted on  by



Explore our list of Family Memoirs - Biography Books at Barnes & Noble®. Get your order fast and stress free with free curbside pickup. Family, by Ian Frazier My favorite memoir is kind of a family history and memoir combined. It’s called Family, by Ian Frazier, and it does cover the range of family. The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss (Hardcover) by Edmund de Waal.

Personal Memoirs & Family Histories

First, what a privately published memoir is—and isn’t. It isn’t The Great American Novel, and you don’t have to be a “Writer” to write it (we’ve got the writing skills, you’ve got the stories). You don’t create this kind of book for fame or fortune. You do it out of love. You do it to preserve family history. You do it to understand who you were, who you are, where you come from. You do it for yourself and those you love, but also for those who will come after you—people you don’t even know because they haven’t been born, but who will know you because of the gift you’ve left behind. Better than money, longer lasting at least. Okay, so maybe you do it for a little bit of fame and the right kind of fortune.

At SMALL BATCH BOOKSwe play as large or small a role as you need to help you create your personal memoir or family history. If you already have a written manuscript, we are your copyeditors, proofreaders, and book designers, taking you from rough draft to polished proof and into printed and bound book form. If you prefer to collaborate throughout the writing process, we interview you and your loved ones, transcribe and edit the conversations into smooth narrative prose, and then publish your memoir by taking it through the final stages of design and production. If fragile old photos and documents are part of your story, we carefully restore these priceless heirlooms with state-of-the-art digital methods, making the images a seamless piece of your memoir (and a permanent part of your family archives). We can also help you research historically relevant maps, photographs, and genealogical charts to illustrate your personal memoir or family history.

Family Memoir Example

Creating and privately publishing a personal memoir or family history can take many forms and encompass many of life’s most transformative experiences.

There’s the story of:

  • your life, in a first-person narrative, a Q & A format, or a “letter” to loved ones, present and future
  • a parent or elder’s life, in a first-person narrative or told by the children and contemporaries
  • a marriage, and the family raised from that marriage, from one or both partners’ perspectives
  • a child’s birth or adoption, and the life-altering experience of becoming a parent
  • three generations of fathers or mothers—the inherited strengths and weaknesses, the differences and similarities, the events and times that shaped them
  • your family’s heirloom recipes, gathered into one volume, in the form of a family recipe book, annotated with anecdotes from the cooks (and their appreciative eaters)
  • a journey, the physical and the metaphysical kind
  • a personal collection—antiques, paintings, or other prized possessions—catalogued and showcased with photographs and accompanying text
  • family letters (and emails) spanning the generations

The form your memoir or family history takes will determine the size and shape of the project, the type of services you’ll need, and therefore the cost. We encourage you to contact us to discuss the details of your personal memoir or family history book, so you can capture your family legacy before it slips away.

Not sure how to start a family memoir?

As you can see in the five examples below, it’s quite common to begin a family memoir with you, the author. To lead off with an “I” or “me” or “my” statement places you squarely within the action and defines what the book is about: you and your relationship to the family.

See how these authors have worked themselves into their family memoirs, right from the start.

1. Start a family memoir with an object that holds memories

Family memoir books

John McCain, Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir (2016) – a New York Times bestseller

I have a picture I prize of my grandfather and father, John Sidney McCain Senior and Junior, taken on the bridge of a submarine tender, the USS Proteus, in Tokyo Bay a few hours after the Second World War had ended. They had just finished meeting privately in one of the ship’s small staterooms and were about to depart for separate destinations. They would ever see each other again.

Despite the weariness that lined their faces, you can see they were relieved to be in each other’s company again. My grandfather loved his children. And my father admired my grandfather above all others. My mother, to whom my father was devoted, had once asked him if he loved his father more than he loved her. He replied simply, “Yes, I do.”

2. Start a family memoir with your education, in a far away place

Khizr Kahn, An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice (2017)

I carried a sheaf of papers almost as thick as my hand to the third floor of my dorm on New Campus, just across the canal from the academic buildings. My room was small and sparse, just a metal desk with a matching chair and a small electric fan to blow away a little of the Pakistani heat. It suited me. My clothes were tucked neatly into a closet, and my bed was a cotton mattress on the floor. There had been an iron bed frame, but it was too short for me, so out it went. Sleeping on the floor was better for my back, anyway.

3. Start a family memoir by describing something that sets you and your family apart

D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture(2016) – a New York Times #1 bestseller

How to write a family memoir

Like most small children, I learned my home address so that if I got lost, I could tell a grown-up where to take me. In kindergarten, when the teacher asked me where I lived, I could recite the address without skipping a beat, even though my mother changed addressed frequently, for reasons I never understood as a child. Still, I always distinguished ‘my address’ from ‘my home.’ My address was where I spent most of my time with my mother and sister, wherever that might be. But my home never changed: my great-grandmother’s house, in the holler, in Jackson, Kentucky.

4. Start a family memoir with a recitation of family facts

Charles Bronfman, Distilled: A Memoir of Family, Seagram, Baseball, and Philanthropy(2017)

I was the fourth of four, with all that goes with that. Each of us, the children of Sam and Saidye Bronfman, were two years apart in age. Minda was born in 1925, Phyllis in 1927, Edgar in 1929, and me in 1931. My parents wanted me to be born on June 20, the same day Edgar was born and the same day as their wedding anniversary. Phyllis says they went for a ride on a bumpy road to try to induce my arrival, but I was stubborn and didn’t make an appearance until a week later. She chuckles that I was kind of a “squabby, long kid…like a chicken.” Whether it was the poultry look or not, I was most certainly the overprotected youngest of the family, something of a toy for the others. Phyllis says I was an adorable little kid with blond hair, and crossed-eyed, which meant I wore glasses with one lens frosted.

5. Start a family memoir by touching upon the thing that loomed so very large in your family’s life

Flora Miller Biddle, The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made: A Family Memoir(2017)

Family memoir interview questions

Ever since I can remember, the Museum hovered at the edges of my consciousness.

At first, like New York, the Museum was another faraway place to which my parents would disappear for weeks at a time to see ‘Mama,’ my mother’s mother, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. ‘Mummy needs to see her mummy, too, just like you do,’ my nurses would say. ‘She’ll be back soon.’ Small comfort. She was surely too old to need a mummy.

The image of the Museum grew as I did. Much later, in the ‘50s, it came to symbolize a completely different way of life from mine.

How to write a memoir

Family Memories Quotes

Now that you’ve seen how to start a family memoir…

As you can see, there is no standard approach to beginning a family memoir. The best opening for your story will depend on your tone and theme, how familiar the readers are with your family, the point you’re making, and other factors.

Family Memoir Meaning

For more on how to begin a memoir in general, see our “How to Start a Memoir.”

Family Memoir Book Publishing

You can also see examples of how specific types of memoirs are started in these blogs:

Family Memoir

“How to Start a Military Memoir“

Family Memoir Example

IF YOU’D LIKE HELP WRITING YOUR MEMOIR …

Contact us! We’re Barry Fox and Nadine Taylor, professional ghostwriters and authors with a long list of satisfied clients and editors at major publishing houses.

Check out our Testimonials Page to read their comments.

Then call us at 818-917-5362, or use our contact form to send an email. We’d love to talk to you about your exciting book project!