A Family of Strangers
A Family of Strangers: A Lyric Essay Deborah Tall,
Publisher: Sarabande Books
ISBN: 193251144X
DDC: 814.54
Edition: Paperback; 2006-11
Summary:
"Without self-absorption, Tall traces the self's emergence in a place
which she recognized from the start as her testing place."-Seamus
Heaney "In the literature of place, Deborah Tall's book stands out
for its delicacy, range of learning, and refreshing
frankness."-Phillip Lopate In her third book of nonfiction, Deborah
Tall explores the genealogy of the missing. Haunted by her orphaned
father's abandonment by his extended family, his secretive,
walled-off trauma and absent history, she sets off in pursuit of the
family he claims not to have. From the dutiful happiness of Levittown
in the 1950s to a stricken former shtetl in Ukraine, we follow Tall's
journey through evasions and lies. Reflecting on family secrecy,
postwar American culture, and the urge for roots, Tall's search
uncovers not just a missing family but an understanding of the part
family and history play in identity. A Family of Strangers is Tall's
life's work, told in such exacting, elegant language that the
suppressed past vividly asserts its place in the present. Deborah
Tall is the author of four books of poems, most recently Summons,
published by Sarabande Books after Charles Simic chose it for the
Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize. She has also published two previous
two books of nonfiction, The Island of the White Cow: Memories of an
Irish Island and From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place,
and co-edited the anthology The Poet's Notebook with Stephen Kuusisto
and David Weiss. Tall has taught writing and literature at Hobart and
William Smith Colleges and edited its literary journal, Seneca
Review, since 1982. She lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband
David Weiss and their two daughters.
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