I think in many ways people are like broken mirrors: lots of little shards of glass, scattered on the surface, showing different parts of ourselves at certain angles to certain people. These pieces of us come in all shapes and sizes, hidden or highly visible, but sometimes we can’t see them without looking in other reflections.
What happens when we package up those little spectacles of ourselves and present them to others? What happens to the pieces left behind?
Dirty Laundry was a fascinating and witty talk with panelists Rhys Nicholson, Benjamin Law, and Amy Thunig, featured as part of Sydney Writers Festival 2024. A comedian, a multi-hyphenate writer, and a research fellow run onto a stage and walk across a tight-rope: how much of oneself are we obligated to share when we let people peek behind the curtain? The three have all written memoirs (spanning across 14 years of publishing), and now exist to some degree as public personas.
They each stumbled into memoir writing in fascinating ways. Law started writing essays for the Black Inc. Growing Up Asian in Australia anthology (of which he’d later compile the Growing Up Queer in Australia edition), and once he began writing those essays they poured out of him until they became a book. Thunig floated between panels and academic writings to fund their studies as a single mother, and after a particularly poignant piece after the devastating bushfires of 2020, she was offered the chance to write a memoir. And for Nicholson… “the word cashgrab comes to mind”, they say with their signature winking nod and cheeky grin.
Law maps a fascinating journey from memoir to TV show with The Family Law, including recounting his experience with casting actors to portray the family and friends in his story. His memoir, then, became split into three disparate realms: his life, his story, and his fictionalised depiction of both. When asked if he’d write another memoir, Law says he still needs time and distance to process everything since the show. If, in his own words, writing a memoir in his 20s was “sociopathic… but full of chutzpah”, it’s understandable that unpacking how one’s life has evolved and reflected across these many lives is not an easy task.
Nicholson falls back on the fact that writing about their own life is the topic they naturally know the most about. One of their biggest struggles? Coming to understand that their story is intertwined with other people’s and doing justice to their own narrative whilst honouring everyone else’s.
Thunig’s story pulled me deeply. Drawn to media writing due to the ingrained inaccessibility of academia (both for would-be academics and the communities often under the microscope in their research), their memoir maps a messy and sometimes brutal childhood and the journey to grow through that and choose love anyway. Thunig “saw [their] childhood as a child”, and in a way was blessed with not seeing the fullness of the story from the eyes of the adults around them. It is a story that is wholly theirs, of perseverance and a journey to becoming the beautiful and eloquent writer and public speaker they are today.
In every instance, these memoirs trek across other stories. They touch the lives of family and friends, strangers and colleagues, co-attendees at a writer’s panel, and it’s clear that in every interaction we have with someone else, we learn infinitely more about ourselves and our ability to love and laugh and grow.
Helmed by the sage presence of moderator George Haddad, the three writers shared a genuine love, respect, and camaraderie for each other onstage. There were jokes, wit, sincerity in moments of earnestness, and yet it’s important to remember that this was another facet of individuals who choose to discuss these things, who give parts of themselves in the hope we can find something in them.
Nicholson puts it succinctly: “I’m giving you a work about this feeling, it doesn’t mean you get access to the rest”. But in those blissful moments we do, it is a treasure to peel back a layer of someone’s brain and know that it functions like everyone else’s. We can look in their little mirrors and see parts of ourselves, and maybe be less afraid of what’s staring back at us.