Misery lit

Misery lit is a literary genre dwelling on trauma, mental and physical abuse, destitution, or other enervating trials suffered by the protagonists or, allegedly, the writer (in the case of memoirs).

[1][2] Works in the genre typically—though not exclusively—begin in the subject's childhood, and very often involve suffering some mistreatment, physical or sexual abuse, or neglect, perpetrated by an adult authority figure, often a parent or guardian.

trace the beginning of the genre to A Child Called "It", a 1995 memoir by American Dave Pelzer, in which he details the abuse he claims to have suffered at the hands of his alcoholic mother, and two subsequent books which continue the story.

[2] At the W H Smith chain, the section is titled "Tragic Life Stories"; in each case side-stepping the awkward dilemma of whether to categorize the books under fiction or non-fiction.

The book was a fabrication, and although it contained a variety of factual errors, it became a widely read bestseller for several decades as it capitalized on anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States.

Other, more recent memoirs, which tell of childhood miseries as a result of parental abuse, drug use, illness and the like, have been exposed as hoaxes, including Go Ask Alice (1971) by Beatrice Sparks, A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story (1993) by "Anthony Godby Johnson", The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2001) by "JT LeRoy", Kathy's Story (2005) by Kathy O'Beirne[11] and Love and Consequences (2008) by Margaret Seltzer.