From Joyce Carol Oates' recent review (in the TLS) of Alice Sebold's Lucky: A Memoir:

Ours is the age of what might be called the New Memoir: the memoir of sharply focused events, very often traumatic, in distinction to the traditional life-memoir. The New Memoir is frequently written by the young or relatively young, the traditional memoir is usually the province of the older. In this sub-genre, the motive isn't to write a memoir because one is an individual of stature or accomplishment, in whom presumably readers might be interested, but to set forth out of relative anonymity the terms of one's physical/psychological ordeal; in most cases, the ordeal is survived, so that the memoirist moves through trauma into coping and eventual recovery. Though the literary structure may sound formulaic, exemplary memoirs like Lucky break the formula with their originality of insight and expression. Like most good prose works, Lucky is far from un-ambiguous: the memoir can be read as an alarming and depressing document, and it can be read as genuinely "uplifting". The pivotal point in Sebold's recovery doesn't occur until years after the rape when, ironically, she comes upon her own case discussed in Dr Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery in terms of "post traumatic stress disorder".

It seems to me that Joyce Carol Oates has a gift for coinages. Last year I noted her explication of what she calls memoirist-reportage in the New York Review.