Should you tell your own story? Navigating the tricky art of memoir
In Season 4, we're examining the roles of bravery, fear and authenticity in storytelling. This episode explores the kind of story you may have written or reported yourself — or thought about, and maybe even chickened out on telling: a deeply personal, emotional experience. Perhaps you want to use it as an example or a lens into a bigger issue, one that matters to millions. When memoir is done well, it can move us in a way that almost no other form can do. But pulling it off can be painful, and it's tricky to discern whether your story is simply your own, or whether it is meaningful in the wider world. Maribel Quezada Smith grapples with all of these challenges in her tale of life and death, "The Latino Expectation of Pregnancy: a Story of Pregnancy Loss," produced for The Pulso Podcast. What do we do when joy and grief collide in the same moment? Please use care when listening.
Sound Judgment · Maribel Quezada Smith, Audrey Nelson, Tina Bassir, Kevin Kline, Elaine Appleton Grant
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Show Notes
Sharing a personal experience, especially a traumatic one, is a particularly popular scripted podcast form. Memoir done well often shoots to the top of the podcast charts or the bestseller list. It moves us, leaves us breathless, inspires standing ovations and prompts us into conversations and confessions of our own. Sometimes memoir creates change.
But memoir produced without first grappling with why your experience matters to others can sound cheap, sensation-grabbing, and empty. As listeners, readers, and viewers, we are bombarded with confessions.
There is a fine line between transformative and indulgent.
Moreover, stories of heartbreak are hard to choose to listen to these days, because the world is showering us with trauma.
Given the circumstances, why make memoir?
The decision to make the private public isn’t easy. Nor should it be.
In the first episode of Sound Judgment, Season 4, I explore this question with producer Maribel Quezada Smith, who shares her extraordinary experience with life and death in The Pulso Podcast piece, “The Latino Experience of Fertility: A Story of Pregnancy Loss.”
It took Maribel two years to write and produce this remarkable story about the birth of her son — and the death of her daughter. Her story succeeds, in part, because she identified something fresh: Miscarriage and other forms of pregnancy loss are particularly common in the Latino community, Pulso’s audience. And so is the incredible societal pressure to bear children, setting up an impossible, often hidden, conflict.
That her story succeeds in transforming, not indulging, is evident in the piles of grateful responses she received from listeners who shared her experience, but who had never heard their story reflected out loud. Shame and secrecy had dogged their lives. Maribel’s story brought in the light.
Along the way, Maribel had to answer several questions for herself about motivation, format, theme, mood, and point of view. Which private moments should she capture on tape? How much could she bear? To whom did she owe privacy? Which scenes and reflections would create momentum — and which pieces would she have to leave out?
Maribel Quezada Smith is a bilingual video and podcast producer and the founder of Diferente Creative. Her video credits include producing TV shows for Discovery Networks, Netflix, TLC and A&E, and digital content for brands like AARP, NBC GolfNow and SquadCast FM. Her podcasting credits include Sacred Scandal (iHeart), Birdies Not BS and Pulso Podcast, to name a few. In 2021, Maribel co-founded BIPOC Podcast Creators, an organization devoted to amplifying the voices and stories of people of color.
Maribel’s passion is creating meaningful, standout content.
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Credits
Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC.
Host: Elaine Appleton Grant
Podcast Manager: Tina Bassir
Production Manager: Andrew Parrella
Audio Engineer: Kevin Kline
Production Assistant: Audrey Nelson