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Title details for In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi - Wait list

In the Darkroom

by Susan Faludi
Laurel Lefkow
Audiobook
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From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash, comes In the Darkroom, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father and the larger riddle of identity consuming our age."In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things―obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness."So begins Susan Faludi's extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and in her own haunted family saga. When the feminist writer learned her seventy-six-year-old father―long estranged and living in Hungary―had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as "a complete woman now" connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known?Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her childhood and her father's many incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. When the author travels to Hungary to reunite with her father, she drops into a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics in a country hell-bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful―and virulent―nationhood. The search for identity that has transfixed our century was proving as treacherous for nations as for individuals.Faludi's struggle to come to grips with her father's metamorphosis self takes her across borders―historical, political, religious, sexual—to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you "choose," or a thing you can't escape?

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    August 23, 2016

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781504789295
      • File size: 396876 KB
      • Duration: 13:46:49

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 2, 2016
      Pulitzer-winning journalist and feminist author Faludi’s wrought and multi-layered memoir focuses on the life of her father, who came out as transgender and took the name Stefánie at the age of 76. In 2004, after nearly 25 years of estrangement, Faludi ((Backlash) and Stefánie reunite in Hungary following Stefánie’s transition to explore her past and reconnect. Faludi dives into Stefánie’s enigmatic past with a journalist’s dogged lust for truth. During a decade of visits to Hungary, where her father relocated after a contentious divorce, Faludi examines Stefánie’s complex psyche in the context of centuries of Hungarian history, with an emphasis on the war years when Stefánie was an adolescent Jewish urchin on the streets of Budapest. Through research, conversation, and relentless probing, Faludi paints a vivid picture of the war and the tormented lives—and deaths—of Hungarian Jews. (In one dramatic scene, Stefánie, disguised with a pilfered Arrow Cross armband and cap, rescues her own parents from the Nazis). The author also sheds light on the dangerous climate of prejudice and racism that persists in Hungary. This is a powerful and absorbing memoir of a parent/child relationship.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Laurel Lefkow shines most brightly when recounting the most difficult moments of Susan Faludi's life--her conversations with her father after years of estrangement and the news of his sex reassignment surgery at the age of 76. Lefkow captures moments of fragility and nuance as Susan's father, now Stefi, overshares some information while deliberately avoiding and obscuring other events. Much of Susan's story involves her experience of growing up in a difficult home environment, the child of Holocaust survivors from Hungary. Lefkow ably handles the passages of exposition, giving extensive background on gender identity, anti-Semitism, and the Jewish experience in Europe during WWII. This immersive story about a father and daughter illuminates so much more. A.F. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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