Fathering Daughters: Reflections by Men - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807062197 ISBN 13: 9780807062197

Publisher: Beacon Press, 1999

Synopsis

A landmark collection of original essays that fills the void of writing by men about their daughters. Contributors include Phillip Lopate, Rick Bass, Gerald Early, Gary Soto, Scott Sanders, Nicholas Delbanco, and Alan Cheuse.

About this title

Review

Literally hundreds of books cast light on the mother-daughter bond, but the relationship between a girl and her other parent remains stubbornly hidden in shadow. The strikingly lucent essays in Fathering Daughters do their best to repair that imbalance. There's Rodger Kamentz, who prefers speaking English straight up rather than babbling baby talk at his infant Anya--"Why offer her ears a blurry target?"--and Rick Bass, who worries about tweaking his daughters' political consciousness too hard. You want your daughters to loathe injustice, he says, but do you want them to burn as erratically and out-of-control as you do--with that much bitterness? Psychiatrist Samuel Shem observes American gender differences with some alarm as his 3-year-old daughter anxiously considers what to wear before a play date where the boy will snub her attempts to connect. Darker tales surface from Gary Soto, drowning in depression, and William Petersen, on a vacation with a daughter dying of leukemia. A few essays are irritatingly narcissistic, but the best showcase some tremendous writers capturing murmurs that swell to a roar as they echo back from our own lives. --Francesca Coltrera

From Kirkus Reviews

These essays by writers including Rick Bass, Alan Cheuse, Nicholas Delbanco, Mark Pendergrast, and editors McPherson (Crabcakes, 1998, etc.) and Henry (founding editor of Ploughshares magazine), among others, strike deep into the heart of issues spanning both nurture and gender relations, and represent some of the best recent writing about manhood. Looking beyond a politicized definition of the father-daughter relationship, the editors have sought for this collection essays that express what they call ``the perplexities of parenting daughters during these decades of questioning, polarization, and social change.'' The results are grouped by life-stage (``Arrivals,'' ``Early Childhood,'' ``Girlhood and Adolescence,'' etc.). In the opening essay, about the birth of his daughter, Lily, Phillip Lopate struts his stuff, skillfully combining humor and seriousness to arrive at a persuasive rejection of solipsism. Fictionists Adam Schwartz and Samuel Shem are both fathers of adopted Chinese orphans. Says Shem in describing his young daughter's searching intensity, ``Living with Katie is like living with a twenty-four-hour-a-day Zen master.'' Gerald Early, himself an African-American, recalls teaching his teenage daughter to drive and her search for a race-free identity. DeWitt Henry worries about his teenage daughter's late-night partying, and Gary Soto writes about living with depression as a father. All of these perspectives reveal hard-won insights about parenting girls and young women from a man's perspective. As might be expected of any thematic collection, some of the essays here are stronger than others. But the best are truly memorable, as with McPherson's ``Disneyland,'' in which separation and race figure prominently, and which incorporates a haunting jazz-like refrain; and photographer William Peterson's ``Border,'' about a last trip to Mexico with a daughter dying of leukemia (``there are some things you cannot accept''). Fine personal writings, to be published for Father's Day, that deserve a wide audience. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0807062197
• ISBN 13: 9780807062197
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 237
• Editor: DeWitt Henry, James Alan McPherson