While I was reading this book, one of my coworkers asked me why. I had just shown it to her and tried to explain what it’s about; the subtitle is “Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity,” but I wanted to show her more, so I read off the chapter names for her:
Son
Dwarfs
Prodigies
Rape
Crime
Father
Her response was simply, “Christina, why are you doing that to yourself?” My question is, why haven’t I read this book sooner? Looking back, it is definitely the most challenging and beautiful books I’ve ever read. We need to keep challenging ourselves!
"This book's stories were to my love for my children much as parables are to faith, the concrete narratives that make the greatest abstractions true" (p. 698).
I could not connect with Solomon through his parenthood or his connection to children. I am not a parent, and I have a very different connection with children than he shared in his book. I could, however, connect with his fascination for varying identities that seemed to drive his writing. Many of the chapters and identity names that he presented were labels I had never heard individuals identify with before. This book opened my eyes to even more ways that people in the world see and define themselves in the context in which they live their lives. I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts provoked by various quotes in this book, and I thank my professor at the Rochester Intitute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Kevin Williams for recommending this book to my class.
Honorable mention quotes:
Down Syndrome; "Yet writing in Newsweek about her brother with DS, Colgan Leaming said, 'My brother is not his disability. He is a teenager who loves sports and PlayStation, who cares a little bit too much about his hair and is a little bit too confident, who is kind to every person he meets, who makes you laugh so hard your stomach hurts. He's a boy just like anyone else. Kevin does not have "special needs." All he needs is a chance'" (p. 204).
Autism; "'Society has developed a tendency to examine things from the point of view of a bell curve. How far away am I from normal? What can I do to fit in better? But what is on top of the bell curve? Mediocrity. That is the fate of American society if we insist upon pathologizing difference'" (p. 276-277).
Schizophrenia; "Emerging with the early-intervention movement is the recovery movement, which proposes biological treatment to address positive symptoms, and psychosocial methods to ameliorate negative and cognitive symptoms. The focus is on improving the quality of life even for those whose clinical condition is poor, emphasizing that impaired people still have capacities that should be maximized" (p. 327).
Transgender; "'The biggest change for me is not going from male to female: it's going from someone who has a secret to someone who doesn't really have secrets anymore. ... A double life is exhausting and ultimately tragic, because you can't ever be loved if you can never be known. ... It's impossible to hate anyone whose story you know'" (p. 625).
Solomon, A. (2012). Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. New York: Scribner Classics.
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