Misery lit

Misery lit (mis lit, misery memoirs or mis mems, misery porn) is a genre of supposedly biographical literature mostly concerned with the protagonist's triumph over personal trauma or abuse, often during childhood. It is also sometimes called "pathography." The genre is generally considered to be American in origin, but later became popular in Britain as well. The term misery lit was ostensibly coined by The Bookseller magazine.

Works in the genre typically—though not exclusively—begin in the subject's childhood, and very often involve suffering some wrong, physical or sexual abuse, or neglect, perpetrated by an adult authority figure, often a parent. These tales usually culminate in some sort of emotional catharsis, redemption or escape from the abuse or situation. They are often written in the first person.

Most critics trace the beginning of the genre to A Child Called "It", a 1995 memoir by American Dave Pelzer, in which he details the outrageous abuse he claims to have suffered at the hands of his alcoholic mother, and two subsequent books which continue the story. Pelzer's three books—all recovery narratives dealing with his childhood—created considerable controversy, including doubt as to the veracity of the claims. While the books spent a combined total of 448 weeks on the New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list, Pelzer acknowledges purchasing and reselling many thousands of his own books.

Jung Chang's Wild Swans (1992) and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes (1996) are also seen as seminal works establishing the genre.

Misery lit has been described as "the book world's biggest boom sector". Works in the genre comprised 11 of the top 100 bestselling English paperbacks of 2006, selling nearly two million copies between them. The Waterstone’s chain of British book retailers even instituted a discrete "Painful Lives" section; Borders followed suit with "Real Lives". At the W H Smith chain, the section is entitled "Tragic Life Stories"; in each case side-stepping the dilemma of whether to categorize the books under Fiction or Non-fiction.

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Wikipedia