Just over a century after the release of D.W. Griffith’s film “The Birth of a Nation,” Nate Parker’s film of the same name came to the silver screen. While the Griffith film justified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed white racism as the salvation of America, the Parker film traces the life of Nat Turner and the slave revolt which he led in pre-Civil War Virginia. From totally opposing perspectives, both films spoke to the fear and anger that has poisoned American race relations since before the Revolution.

It should certainly not surprise us that films speak to our national consciousness and help us define who we are and what we believe. If there is one art form that is quintessentially American, it is movies, and what greater purpose has art than to explore the human condition.

While the two “Birth of a Nation” films explore the darkest sides of American race relations, three other films released at the end of 2016 try to raise an entirely different set of issues.

“Fences,” based on the August Wilson stage play, presents a Black America that is separate and if not equal one that has its own unique culture. The protagonist Troy Maxson is a Black man who is painfully aware of the limitations that have been placed on his life because of his race. Fearful of what the world will do to them, he tries to protect his sons by forcing them to see the world through his own bitter eyes. Set in the 1950’s, “Fences” references both the fact that Black Americans were fenced in by segregation and prejudice and the career of Jackie Robinson, whose success as a baseball player gave hope for an avenue towards equality.

“Loving” is based not on a play or story but real lives. Richard and Mildred Loving were a working-class couple who loved one another. Because he was White and she Black, the state of Virginia forbad their marriage. Going out of state to marry, they returned to Virginia and found themselves jailed and only released if they promised to leave the state. Featured in a Life Magazine story which I remember reading, the Lovings eventually won not only the right to have their marriage recognized in the home state but also the legal end of miscegenation laws in America. Loving v. Virginia was decided by the Supreme Court Dec 12, 1967. The movie asks a simple but poignant question: are Blacks less human than Whites; are we not all more nearly human than otherwise?

During the years between 1958, when the Lovings married, and 1967 another story was also playing out in Virginia. NASA was established in 1958 with the goal of taking America into space. “Hidden Figures” focuses on three Black women who worked at NASA’s Virginia facilities. Dorothy Vaughan eventually became NASA’s first Black-American supervisor. Mary Jackson became an aeronautical engineer. And, mathematics whiz Katherine Johnson played a pivotal role in figuring out how to bring the astronauts home. These three women entered NASA when it was a segregated and misogynistic organization and managed to find the recognition they deserved. This multiple-biopic subconsciously takes us back to Jackie Robinson as it challenges us to judge people not on race but on competence. Should the best mathematician, engineer, or supervisor not get the job regardless of the color of their skin. The message is clear: we are all the same under our skins. Or, to use one of the most self-conscious lines of the script, “At NASA we all pee the same color.” Presumably, that is the color of rocket fuel.

Why this sudden spurt of films about the Black experience in the fifties and sixties? It would be easy to point out the diversity has become an issue in Hollywood and particularly when it comes to awards. That may be one part of the answer.

Another, and in my opinion a more important answer is represented by that centennial of the release of that abhorrent film “The Birth of a Nation.” The release of that film in 1915 began a portrayal of Black America that has often been offensive and assuredly requires redress. As distasteful as the representations of Blacks has overall been in film, that issue pales in comparison to the actuality of Black life. And, on the other side, as horrific as slavery, segregation, and bigotry have been, there has been real movement towards civil rights. Without doubt, the possibilities for Black Americans are far greater and better today than they were at the beginning of the fifties and sixties.

The question that these three films asks is what has made things better. During those years, powerful voices were raised, marches held, and riots occurred. Were those the catalyst for change, or did change come because White America came to see Blacks, like all of us, were more nearly human than otherwise? These new films would have us ignore the marchers, the rioters, and the conflicts. They would have us learn a new mythology of American race relations, one in which aspirations change the world and the system can be altered from within.

These three movies are trying to rewrite the history of race in America. They are trying to say, “Let us forget about racism and segregation. Let us forget about the struggle that brought Civil Rights. Let us instead recognize that the right prevails, that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,’ and that the basic American character is one of decency.”

Is this revision realistic? Can we rewrite American history and bury slavery, segregation, the Klan, and discrimination? The rage of both “Birth of a Nation” films is seared into the soul of America. It cannot be so easily papered over. Elimination of America’s racial divide will require not simply the creation of a new set of “happier” myths but real reconciliation.

The great Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung spoke of the shadow, that part of each person that they cannot accept in themselves. It is the part of the person that they keep hidden. Reconciliation cannot take place until those shadowy parts on all sides are exposed in the light of recognition. As much as I enjoyed the three films, “Fences,” “Loving,” and “Hidden Figures,” I see them not as sanguine harbingers of a just and equal society but as signs that once again America will try to bury that which is dark in our history. If the “American Dilemma” is to be resolved, it cannot be by the application of whitewash but only by the piercing sting of real discussion.

After finishing college, I spent some time in grad school in New York City. Caught in a depressed mood swing, I didn’t want to live in a dorm or share an apartment with other people, so I found a place I could afford at the edge of Harlem. The building in which I lived was rent-controlled and filled with elderly Jewish tenants. Downstairs we had a neighborhood newspaper and candy store much like the one my maternal grandfather had owned when I was little. Dave, the owner, was as weary and worn as my Pa had been, but at least he could walk without a cane and discuss the happenings of the day; he read every one of New York’s dailies.

What Dave couldn’t do was sell me a paper or an egg cream without a commentary on how the neighborhood had gone downhill since he had moved in and bought his business fifty-some years earlier; and that plaint always followed by an appropriate groan of “Oy vey iz mir”.

Across the street, 163rd to be exact, was another little store, this a bodega in which all business—except mine—seemed to be conducted in Spanish. They, too, sold newspapers, ones I couldn’t read beyond the frequent references to Puerto Rico in the headlines. The bodega sold the little cigars I preferred to the Parliaments I got at Dave’s. They also sold bright pink, green, and other vibrantly colored sweets and sodas with contents I had never actually tried so I knew I wouldn’t like.

Swirling around the Jewish and Puerto Rican center of my tiny world was a sea of Blacks. Of course, back then they were called Negros. Mostly, they ignored me and I them except for one time—late at night—when a teen decided to rob me.

“Hand over your money,” he demanded, his hand thrust deep in his pocket.

I complied and handed him the five bucks and thirty-two cents I had in my pocket.

“Al of it!”

“That’s it,” I answered. “If I had money, do you think I’d live in this part of town? What I don’t understand is why you’re robbing people who live around here. Why don’t you go where people actually have money to steal?”

He thought about that and handed back my four singles, three quarters, four dimes, three nickels, and two pennies. “I guess you need this more than me.”

I handed a buck back to him. “You’ll need subway fare.”

He shoved the bill into his pocket and slouched towards the subway entrance on the corner.

I never saw him again. I wonder if he took my advice.

Jewish, Puerto Rican, or Black, we all shopped at the one grocery store, Sloan’s on Saint Nicholas Ave. It was the only grocery in the neighborhood and the prices seemed reasonable. That was they seemed reasonable until I wanted a piece of meat.

I didn’t do a lot of cooking. Breakfast was dry cereal and coffee. Most days I ate my other meals in the school cafeteria—tasteless but cheap—or in one of the less expensive restaurants I could find along Broadway. Sometimes—to be honest many times—I got fried chicken from this great little storefront on 125th; mine was usually the only white face in the place, but who cared? If I did “cook” a meal, it usually meant hotdogs or warmed canned stew. Once in a while Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup heated with canned tuna and dumped over a piece of toast.

I don’t know why I suddenly wanted steak: just a whim or perhaps my body communicating some subconscious nutritional need. Whatever the reason, I took the coffin-sized elevator down to the entryway, pulled my winter jacket tight against the cold that found its way off the Hudson, waved to Dave as I rounded the corner, and continued half a block to Sloan’s.

The meat department was along the back wall, right side. Packages labeled “steak” filled a small segment of the display case. I picked through.

Why are they green?

I took a pack: “Rump Steak, 1 pound”, brought it to the butcher’s window, and turned my question into words.

“That means it’s ready for cooking,” the “butcher” assured me. “We age our steak here. This color means it’s properly aged.”

I didn’t believe him, but I bought that pound of meat anyway. My curiosity aroused, I was going to do some comparison shopping.

Hopping on the subway, I headed to the Westside, to the world of brownstone buildings and upper-middle incomes. Finding a Sloan’s was easy. I took my brown paper bag with its “rump steak” contents—label removed—to the meat department, found another pound package of rump steak—which was 15 cents a pound more than I had paid on Amsterdam Ave—went to the butcher’s window and asked. “I have this pound of steak I bought someplace else; but when I was on my way home, I realized I needed another pound. I don’t want this girl who’s coming over to think I’m cheap. Anyway, I came in to buy another pound, but there’s something wrong with your meat.”

“There’s nothing wrong with our meat,” the butcher informed me. “We carry the best meat you can get.”

“Oh, but the butcher in the other place said meat should look like this. That it should be properly aged.” I pulled the package of “aged” steak from the bag. “Yours is a different color.”

“Where did you buy this crap?” the butcher demanded. “First, it’s going rotten. I wouldn’t feed it to my dog. And…” He took a careful look, “This ain’t steak. Too veiny and tough. If it were fresh, you might use it for stew. My advice, throw it and buy two new steaks.” He turned away and then threw in an afterthought. “And, hey, kid, not rump. Get yourself a sirloin.”

I thanked him, but I didn’t buy any meat. Instead, I went to a Gristedes and bought myself half a pound of chopped meat. Salisbury would have to do since I’d exhausted my pocketbook.

Back on 163rd St, I stopped at Dave’s to pick up a paper and a candy bar. Munching my Milky Way, I shared the day’s experience.

“That’s why I hate them,” Dave said. “Those coloreds move in and everything goes to shit.”

Something had surely gone to shit, but it wasn’t the Blacks or the Hispanics or the Jews who had caused it. In those days, before sell-by dates and in parts of the city where the less affluent lived, taking advantage of people who had less by selling them food that was on the edge of turning was common practice. No point in pointing that out to Dave.

“You don’t have to tell me,” the corner store owner continued. “I live here. I shop here. I’m getting screwed, too. What can you do? If I could find somebody to sell this place to, I’d get the hell out; but who wants to buy up here? What another Rican without any money? “Oy vey iz mir!”

I didn’t shop at Sloan’s anymore—not for canned goods and certainly not for “properly aged” steak. I went farther downtown and paid the extra that really wasn’t extra at all. But there was one thing I couldn’t figure out. Dave seemed like a smart enough guy. He read the papers and kept abreast of things. Still, he didn’t get it: The bad guys were the greedy management at Sloan’s who were cheating all of us. Not the customers—Black, white, Hispanic—whose poverty and lack of information kept them only a lucky hairsbreadth away from food poisoning.

“Oy vey iz mir indeed.

Personally, I’ve never wanted to write a memoir. I’ve never thought my life complex or meaningful enough to warrant one. My preference has always been to stand back and observe while others took action and risk, which is not to say that I have no great moments of revelation to be shared. There have been a few, but not a coherent set that would make a memoir—not a full foundation on which to base a tale.

That said, I’ve noticed that most memoirs rest on the shaky foundation of post-traumatic stress. Often they are piacular, meant to make atonement for the guilt that accompanies the memory of those traumatic events. That guilt may be for harm done to others, for almost doing harm, for not doing right, or simply for ones own unacceptable actions. Whatever the nature of the remorse, it eats at the writer’s innards and demands expiation.

Of course, who among us is not haunted by at least one traumatic event from the past? Who among us does not remember at least one reason to feel guilt? I certainly have had my moments, but they don’t suffice for a memoir because they are not the thread that binds the meaning of my life.

To be effective, a memoir must go beyond the event and provide a grain, a consistent integrating pattern for the writer’s life. Horrible as it may have been, that one anxiety attack, that one experience of rape, that one moment of confronted rage: these are not sufficient for a memoir. A good memoir vibrates with continuity and repetition; it has a quality of pentimento in which the same themes and even events keep returning to the narrative flow—each time with deepened understanding. The therapeutic journal your shrink has suggested you keep, the one in which you write over and over about that traumatic event, that is not a memoir. It may be helpful to you, but it isn’t for publication.

Sadly, the availability of self-publishing has debased memoir more than any other form of writing. It is too easy to conflate one’s therapist’s interest with a waiting audience.

Even when you are cured, when you leave that last therapeutic appointment, your experience is not sufficient if there is nor a clear repetition, a growing crescendo of experience.

But experience—even repetitive experience—without growth is not the stuff that makes a memoir work. Unhappily, there are many women—and men—who have been sexually abused. Starting in childhood and continuing into adulthood, they have suffered at the hands of others who have cared for nothing but their own gratification. A number of these people have decided that their stories are important. And they are, only not to the world. When faced with another version of that all-to-frequent gothic tale, I want to know how did the woman grow, how did she come out the better person. “I’ve learned to let go and go on with my life,” “I’ve accepted my savior and am healed,” or similar one-liner solutions to the devastation of such a life do not make a memoir. The cessation of your personal suffering does not mean that you are offering the world a lesson that deserves $14.99 on Amazon.

No, the lessons you offer must be part of a larger fabric of your story. You are weaving a tale. Just as weaving cloth, you need a warp and woof, so in weaving your tale the repetitive trauma must crisscross the growing awareness of who you are and who you are becoming to give a whole cloth.

Which brings us to yet a third essential element in memoir. If we go into a store to buy cloth or clothing, our eyes are drawn to patterns more than to the simple one color fabrics. That piece of cloth has to evoke something in us. To be stirred by a memoir, the reader must find something in its fabric that is personally arousing. That doesn’t mean it has to be something the reader has personally experienced, quite the contrary. I can read a well written memoir by a rape survivor and become very involved. I care about the person and am furious at the perpetrator. More importantly, I suffer with the author through their personal journey to wholeness and redemption. The key is that I can relate to the person, not identify with the experience. Indeed, I would be less interested in a story that I could find in my own life. I want a story that will take me to new places and ideas. Relatability is not being like me but in sharing our common humanity. For you to share that with me means that you have come across as real, as authentic.

How do I know that I am meeting the real you? How do I know that you are authentic? First, I look for a sense of humor and a realization of the irony that is in your life—as it is in every life. Is it not ironic, for instance, that the child of an alcoholic marries somebody who is marijuana dependent? Isn’t it part of the paradox of life that we all move not from the pot into the fire but from one pot to another? How about the man driven by his desire to succeed in business who is fleeced by the sharper predator? If the memoirist can’t see the irony and laughability of their life, how can they possibly be in touch with its meaning?

If I can relate to you, if I believe in you, then I want to read your story. But there has to be a story for me to read. That is the fourth key element in a successful memoir. Memoirs are not autobiographies; they are not a history of the writer’s experiences. They are stories that are being shared. They take the reader on a journey. That the road is personal and based on true events rather than being made up by the novelist’s mind does not make the storytelling less important.

Think about good fiction. No matter how much it focuses on the experience of a central character, there has to be a world in which that character’s life is set. Events cannot come out of the blue as if the world is at the mercy of whimsy. Motivation and complexity of character, appropriate richness of detail, and a narrative voice that fits with the content are some of the requisites for writing a good story. They are just as necessary for a memoir.

Recently, my abstract thoughts about writing memoir have been challenged by the experience of working with a man who asked me to help him write his story. From South Sudan, Deng Atum left his home at age eight and has not been back since. His journey has taken him on torturous routes replete with starvation and death. He has survived refugee camps. Eventually, he was sent by a charitable organization to the United States, where he has lived for many years. The events of his life are overwhelming and horrific. Clearly the stuff of memoir; but are they? Taking those events and shaping them into his story has been a consuming task for the past few months and we are far from finished.

With each chapter, I go back over the list of ingredients that I have laid out above: Trauma, check; growth, check; humanity and humor, check; and story telling, check. If they are all there, the memoir writer is ready to go on to the next chapter; each building on the ones before, a carefully crafted tale that will in the end intrigue, entertain, and enlighten. At least that’s the goal.