Misery Lit

Literary genre of people's memoirs about their painful, tragic life stories. Usual topics include Abusive Parents (or lack of parents), sexual abuse, drug/alcohol addiction, prostitution, growing up in terrible poverty, or historical horrors such as living through World War II. As autobiographies, these are marketed as non-fiction, but lawsuits may occur if people mentioned in the book disagree with the author's version of events. Such a tale will usually have a bleak white cover with a picture of a wretched-looking child on it, and a dramatic-sounding title like Wrecked, Tormented or Please, Daddy, Stop! in curly writing.

Incredibly profitable genre over the last decade, although in recent years the demand has slowed down somewhat. Some bookstores now devote an entire section to "Tragic Life Stories" or "Painful Lives." Among publishers, the genre is euphemistically termed "inspirational lit" or "inspi-lit." The more cynical among us suspect that people actually get off on the horrific events described in such books (see Do Not Do This Cool Thing), leading to the term "misery porn".

May be related to True Art Is Angsty. Sometimes turns out to be Based on a Great Big Lie. If it gets turned into a film, it's often Oscar Bait. Not to be confused with the Stephen King novel Misery.

Examples of Misery Lit include:

• The ultimate example: The Diary of a Young Girl.
• The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk is pretty much 19th century misery lit, with bonus anti-Catholicism.
• Dave Pelzer is the best known modern-day pioneer of the genre for A Child Called It and sequels, which center around his (alleged) true-life story of suffering horrific abuse from his mentally unstable, alcoholic mother while his father stood by and did nothing.
• Go Ask Alice tried to pass itself off as this, but is now widely agreed to be a work of fiction.
  • Similarly, Jerzy Kozinski's book The Painted Bird was at first interpreted as an autobiographical account of his experiences in Poland during the Holocaust. Not only did it become clear that the book was a work of fiction, but he faced accusations of plagiarizing the book, derailing his career as an author. He committed suicide after enduring ill health as well as his literary damnation. In spite of the controversy, the book is regarded today as a masterpiece of Polish literature.
• Angela's Ashes.
• Ugly by Constance Briscoe, about life with her abusive mother. The mother has now sued over reported factual inaccuracies.
• My Godawful Life by Michael Kelly is a parody of the genre
• Also parodied in Adrian Mole -- The Prostrate Years, where Adrian's mother tries to write her own (faked) memoir entitled A Girl Called "Shit!"
• David Copperfield is told from the point of view of the protagonist writing about the adversities in his life many years later.
• Cathy Glass (pseudonym) has written several of these about her experiences as a foster parent of horribly abused children
• A Million Little Pieces is the most infamous example, although the author admits it's mostly untrue.
• Another controversial example: Don't Ever Tell by Kathy O'Beirne, about the author's experience of growing up in Ireland's Magdalen Laundries. So heavily contested that at least one other book has been written to directly refute her story.
• Wild Swans, to a certain extent: pre-dates the boom of the genre, and is told in a more literary style
• Misha Defonseca wrote a bestselling memoir about her life during the Holocaust, later exposed as a hoax. She admitted the story was a fake but claimed that "rewriting" her past was her way of coping with the genuine tragedies she had experienced.
• British TV presenter Gloria Hunniford wrote one about the struggle with breast cancer and eventual death of her daughter, Caron Keating (also a TV presenter).
• The "Books" episode of Stewart Lees Comedy Vehicle mentions these, presenting the parody The Teats That Wept Tears by Paddy McGinty's Goat.
• Dara O'Briain mentions them in one episode of Mock the Week: "there's the Top 10 at Tesco all called Daddy, No!"
• Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford, depicting her physical and mental abuse at the hands of her adoptive mother Joan Crawford. Likewise the more famous Film of the Book ("I told you! No wire hangers, ever!")
• The Glass Castle: Unusual, in that she never describes her childhood as miserable or even damaging, refuses to vilify her parents, and is really more a memoir of total dsyfunction than abuse. A notch above most?
• Andrew Collins wrote Where Did It All Go Right?, about his perfectly happy and normal childhood, as an antidote of sorts to the misery lit phenomenon.
• My Pet Virus by Shawn Decker -- Decker recounts his life dating back to when he was an 11 year old hemophiliac who gets a blood transfusion, and gets AIDS from it. His drug regimens and general ill-health made him unfit for an eight-hour workday, and finding a woman who was comfortable enough with his HIV status was less than easy, and others with AIDS die all around him. Meant to be a comedy, according to Amazon.com.
• Fearless Living by Rhonda Britten -- Though mostly an inspirational self help book on how to live fearlessly, Rhonda Britten spends a great deal of time detailing how, at the tender age of 14, she saw her father shoot her mother and then himself, and how badly it messed her up, leading to alcoholism and other miserable situations, and climaxing in a suicide attempt and catatonic collapse in a friend's guest bedroom.
• There's a lot of fake examples of this that try to pass themselves off as the real thing too, such as The Angel at the Fence, Love and Consequences, the works of JT LeRoy and Honor Lost. All purport to be about tragic lives of individuals and what not, and all are fictional hoaxes along the lines of Go Ask Alice.
• Fictional example: "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer" from Twin Peaks.
• Referenced in How Not to Write A Novel with "A Novel Called It", advising the reader not to use Abusive Parents as subject matter since they're generally as fun to read about as they are to live with.
• Asparagus Dreams by Jessica Peers is more light-hearted than other examples, containing humorous cartoons by the author, but details her misery and being bullied by staff during her many years in a residential home for autistic children.
• They Cage the Animals at Night by Jennings Michael Burch. It's pretty similar to A Child Called It, albeit not as graphic. It's about a boy and his problems with foster homes and orphanages from the late 40s to the early 50s.
• Three Little Words is an odd example, as the author only focuses on her own misery as a foster child for the first few chapters and during her stay with the Moss family. Most of the other chapters deal with the issues that the system has in general, with her brother's struggles as a foster child, with the loving family that adopts her when she turned twelve, or with her helping to put away abusive foster parents like the Mosses.
• Parodied in Date Night with the book Phil is forced to read for Claire's book club, about a girl who gets her first period in Taliban ruled Afghanistan.