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. (Kirkus Reviews)
An "intelligent, insightful, multi-voiced mosaic depicting a man's
experience as father to a daughter" ("Boston" magazine), "Fathering
Daughters" features diverse essays representing some of the "best
recent writing about manhood" ("Kirkus Reviews").
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