A review by nicki_j
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro
5.0
This is probably more of a 4.5 star book for me but I found it very compelling so I rounded up.
At first, I was decidedly unsympathetic to Shapiro because I felt that she was placing too much emphasis on biology. After all, what if a person who was adopted was reading her words? Certainly their adoptive parents, who raised them, who changed their diapers, wiped their face, drove them to school, cheered at their graduation, etc. ARE their parents, biology be damned. But as I read on, I realized that Shapiro's very fraught relationship with her parents, already so precarious, informed her extreme reaction. It wasn't so much the substance of this secret but the fact of the secret itself that unmoored her. I think if she had had a normal relationship with either parent or if she had been able to ask one of her parents for the truth, she may not have had the same reaction. So, I ended up chiding myself for judging Shapiro when I am not in her shoes and really respecting her emotions as valid.
Shapiro is a strong writer and I loved the interspersion of poetry and prose within the factual memoir. I will definitely read more from her.
At first, I was decidedly unsympathetic to Shapiro because I felt that she was placing too much emphasis on biology. After all, what if a person who was adopted was reading her words? Certainly their adoptive parents, who raised them, who changed their diapers, wiped their face, drove them to school, cheered at their graduation, etc. ARE their parents, biology be damned. But as I read on, I realized that Shapiro's very fraught relationship with her parents, already so precarious, informed her extreme reaction. It wasn't so much the substance of this secret but the fact of the secret itself that unmoored her. I think if she had had a normal relationship with either parent or if she had been able to ask one of her parents for the truth, she may not have had the same reaction. So, I ended up chiding myself for judging Shapiro when I am not in her shoes and really respecting her emotions as valid.
Shapiro is a strong writer and I loved the interspersion of poetry and prose within the factual memoir. I will definitely read more from her.