ABSTRACT
Neoliberal is a complicated word used in a variety of contexts. The term originally refers to a philosophy that champions the power of the individual and advocates minimizing government intervention, particularly in business. Memoirs may seem to align smoothly with neoliberalism's emphasis on individualism. After all, these are stories of the self, accounts of the writer's experiences, ideas, and emotions. Also, the memoir genre may not seem to offer much potential for productive or progressive use in the classroom. Publishers, critics, and readers once 'showed considerable interest' in memoirs that served as 'literary eyewitness to history, capturing the experience of complex lives not characterized by privilege or status', but then these 'were tagged as both lies and inconvenient truths, and their authors were shamed, sidelined, and turned into examples of the excesses of identity politics, and increasingly of the pitfalls of memoir itself'.
