She doesn't appear to care about heroics or even admiration. She stays faithful to the child she was and gives us the world through that child's eyes. If those years left her, as she says they did, with shame and embarrassment, she fights back by providing the details, from the chamber pot emptied on her head to her fascinated peek at a naked nun. There is raw emotion in much memoir, the same raw emotion that pulses through the music teens listen to and pours out in their poetry. A memoir offers a sense of wild risk about telling the secrets, about rolling over to expose the vulnerable places.
Teenagers can also appreciate memoir as an act of defiance.
Well, here it is. I sat quiet, for fifty years. They used words, typewriters, and paper. Not that every teenager likes memoir. The magic of memoir tends to be a triumph of voice, and some teens, especially less adept readers, are bored by voices others find elegant and enticing.