Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, T Kira Madden, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 304 pp
In her debut, a memoir, T Kira Madden relates a childhood full of loneliness and confusion but also so much love that it did not destroy her. Reading the book I was aware of it being carefully crafted with the most beautiful language she could create. Without self pity she revealed emotions that both fit her age as she grew while tinging them with the insights she gained from looking back as a grown woman.
I don't want to say more. I knew maybe too much from listening to her interview on the Otherppl podcast before reading her book. So much that I was in doubt about getting into it. As it turned out her style of compiling incidents into vignettes both short and long was a perfect blend of the wonder and the horror of childhood.
Not once did I feel emotionally manipulated nor was I overcome by what she exposes. Perhaps if I knew her personally or was a relative I would have. Instead my heart went out to her. She seems to have come to a place in life free of recrimination. She did mention therapy in her interview, but she clearly never stopped loving either of her parents.
If you decide to read the book, perhaps you will have some of the thoughts and speculations I had concerning this paradox: how some people have had fine, almost idyllic childhoods and grew up to have bad lives while some lived through bad troubles and grew up to find themselves and create good lives. I suppose we are all somewhere on that particular spectrum. It behooves us all to live with tolerance for others, especially our parents and our children.
Childhood memoirs can be so fascinating. You raise a good point about bad childhoods leading to better adulthoods and vice verse. If only people could find an easier path to happiness in all the stages of their lives.
ReplyDeleteI have come to accept there are no easy paths to happiness, that much is random or due to luck, but that all life is a gift and worth living.
DeleteThis memoir moved me; I was so happy I read it.
ReplyDeleteI was too.
Deletetolerance, yes... one of the, maybe THE main thing...
ReplyDeleteI agree!
DeleteI especially like your last sentence. One of the markers of becoming a grown-up is to take responsibility for who you are and stop blaming your parents for their perceived shortcomings. Tolerance is the key.
ReplyDeleteYes, I meant that but also tolerance for one's children as they work through their blame.
DeleteThis sounds like something I'd highly enjoy. I should read a memoir that I like one day, because I only have kinda bad experiences with memoirs. The once I read were kinda ... Boring..
ReplyDeleteThis one is not boring for a second!
DeleteI dont know what happens in this memoir nor have I heard -- but it sounds a bit intense? or sad? Just trying to prepare myself. Is it like the Tara Westover book or no? thanks.
ReplyDeleteIntense: a bit. Sad: not so much. Like Educated: only because it is a memoir. Somehow she made it into something really good.
DeleteI am interested in this one, thanks for bringing it to my attention. My dad was not around, but that never stopped my childhood from being a wonderful, happy one. I had three uncles and a grandpa who were around all the time, so I never lacked men in my life who cared about me and helped Mom raise me up right. Okay, so I had all fur wrapped around my little finger and I was totally spoiled but that's neither here nor there...
ReplyDeleteEven so, I will be on the lookout for this one.
It made me think about so many things regarding families!
DeleteThis one sounds like something I need to read. I think I could relate to it on some level.
ReplyDeleteI did think of you while I was reading it.
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