The Performance, Not the Person

My Story feels less like encountering Marilyn Monroe the woman and more like watching Marilyn Monroe the performance. The book presents itself as a memoir but never shakes the sense of being unfinished, stylized, and more concerned with image than honesty.Monroe casts herself as a misunderstood intellect, yearning to transcend the “dumb blonde” roles Hollywood pushed on her. Yet the life we know she actually lived—her choices, her career moves, her embrace of stardom—rarely matches the persona she’s projecting here. The result is a constant disconnect: a tragic childhood recast in melodrama, ambition reframed as helplessness, and vulnerability packaged as myth.

This doesn’t mean the memoir is worthless— it’s fascinating as a time capsule of how Monroe wanted to be seen at the height of her fame. But it is not the whole person. It’s a performance of Marilyn, with the real Norma Jeane buried beneath layers of invention.

In the end, My Story is not autobiography. It’s an artifact of self-mythologizing. And while one can feel sympathy for Monroe’s pain, it’s hard to find healing—or truth—in a past retold as something it never really was.