Emotional Truth Telling in Storytelling
By Dr. Joan Sung
Tim O’Brien wrote in The Things They Carried, “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”
This always made perfect sense to me. And when I taught high school English, the students would erupt in debate when I would introduce this book.
If it’s not true, it’s not true!
If you say it’s true, and it’s not, then that’s lying.
It’s black and white.
But here’s the thing: It’s anything but black and white. Our society embraces binary thinking: Pick a side, it’s either this or that, etc. And the enigma is our society simultaneously loves coaching one another on “speaking your truth.”
Why is speaking your truth any different than story-truth?
I recently wrote my debut book, a memoir. While I was working on my manuscript, I attended writing workshops where writers would ask the facilitator how to stop holding themselves back from writing “the truth”. They were terrified that their loved ones would read their books and be offended. I never once had this problem. In fact, I spilled my guts across those pages and left nothing in my heart. I was raw and painfully honest discussing my coming-of-age. And as a result, I truly have no secrets left.
I understand that asking a writer to hold nothing back is easier said than done; but my observation has led me to believe that the reason why these writers were so constipated in their writing was not because they were afraid of being too honest. They were stuck because they didn’t know where truth begins.
What O’Brien calls “story-truth” is what I call “emotional truth”. An example of emotional truth is the saying, “People always say there are three sides to a story: The two people arguing and the truth.” This saying implies that because of our own life experiences, cultural lenses—just general perspective, there is no way that two people can look upon one situation in the same way. If we apply this to the idea of storytelling, we can see that emotional truth is not the same thing as accuracy. I am proposing that as writers, we need to let go of our obsession with accuracy.
Now, we can’t have a conversation about emotional truth without discussing the controversial book, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, an author who fabricated details in his memoir which, unbeknownst to Oprah Winfrey, won a spot in Oprah’s Book Club. But as soon as the public caught wind of the scandal, Winfrey and the general public denounced Frey as a fraud. There are many other memoirists who have found themselves in similar situations.
In my memoir, Kinda Korean: Stories from an American Life, there are times I stitch together stories to more accurately depict my emotional truth. One example I am proud of is three separate instances that I rolled into one memory. Factually, the following happened in my life:
I was driving through Eagle River, Alaska, around 2012 and saw a bare, gnarled tree where about 15 bald eagles sat.
Later that year, I took a pregnancy test and found out I was pregnant with my son.
In 2023, I watched a spider struggle to spin a web on my car’s side window as I drove down the street. When I stopped at a light, I considered saving her because I pitied her. But then I saw her descend happily upon a small white bundle and feast.
My book is about surviving and forgiving my tiger mom; I am a Korean American daughter of immigrants and essentially had to navigate American society on my own since my parents did not speak English. My mother knew nothing about what it meant to be an Asian woman in America.
This is how I created an accurate-to-me memory to portray my emotional truth. I rewrote these events in time to tell a symbolic story:
One day in winter, I saw a bare, gnarled tree full of bald eagles. I wondered if it was an omen. Later that afternoon, I took a pregnancy test and discovered I was pregnant. I began to panic that I was damned to be a tiger mom, like my mother. I sat on the bathroom floor, wondering if I was predetermined to abuse my child the way my mother abused me growing up. I then saw a spider struggling on the bathroom vent; I took pity on her and wondered if I should take her outside. Before I could, she descended upon her victim, a small white bundle caught in her web. I realized that you couldn’t fight nature; a spider will always do what a spider does. However, in that moment, I was determined that I would have to fight my nature for the sake of my child. I would become something other than my mother.
I took creative liberties with my story. Because it is just that: mine . Now, this does not absolve a writer of all responsibility to tell the truth; there is a difference between emotional truth and lying.
Sometimes, I would ask writers if they had ever gotten into an argument, then vented about the fight to a confidant; how many of the writers said, “And then they told me I was the problem!” to which their confidant asked, “Did they actually say that?” and the writer would admit, “No… But they might as well have!”
The above is a classic example of emotional truth. In their mind, it truly did happen; they were told they were a problem. Now, did this actually happen? Not entirely. All that to say, truth can be a gray area. And as memoirists, we must be willing to embrace that gray area.
I understand that this is all controversial; recently, I bumped into a famous author at a conference, and I told him I had a book coming out. “Are you excited?” he asked. I admitted that I was fighting the urge to hide under a rock because I had revealed all. He frowned and said, “I don’t think telling the whole truth is really necessary.” Now it was my turn to frown. He continued, “It’s unnecessary to depict my characters as villains. I mean, my grandmother is a villain but it’s not necessary for me to write about it.”
That’s where I disagreed. As an Asian American woman, it is utterly essential for me to have spoken “my truth”, because our Asian communities are wrought with generational silence. I did it because I had no one to tell me I wasn’t alone in my experiences: being subjected to discrimination, racism, and oversexualization. I poured my heart out so no Asian American woman would ever feel alone in her experiences again. To me, it was life or death to tell my story, even about the things of which I am still so ashamed.
To clarify, I do feel like hiding under a rock as my publication date is looming closer and closer. However, I don’t regret it and, if given the chance, I would do it all over again.
A national Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) conference presenter and consultant, Dr. Joan Sung has a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing, an MA in English, and a Doctorate in Education. She is a published author and former high school teacher for Washington state. Her articles regarding Asian American voices have been published in TinyBeans.com, Mochi Magazine, Memoir Magazine, and Writerly Magazine.