WHAT MY FATHER AND I DON'T TALK ABOUT

Fathers are the lodestone of this varied anthology, which circles them brilliantly.

In this much-anticipated follow-up to the acclaimed What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, writer and editor Filgate prompts 15 esteemed writers to reflect on their fathers. The resulting essays offer a diverse spread, reflecting the panoply of relationships it’s possible to have with that key figure. In Jiordan Castle’s essay, she grapples with finding personal freedom from her father after he is reincarcerated. Susan Muaddi Darraj explores the duty-bound role of the eldest immigrant daughter alongside similar burdens placed on her father. In “The Son,” Robin Reif reveals her desire to receive the status of a son within her patriarchal family and the complicated position her brother occupied as recipient of that coveted mantle. “Roots & Rhizomes” sees Kelly McMasters using the natural world to understand her father—“We’ve probably spoken more about plants than any other topic during our nearly fifty years sharing this planet.” Jaquira Díaz seeks to understand the gaps in her father’s life story while occupying the same city her father once spent a mysterious summer in. In “A Storybook Childhood,” Joanna Rakoff reckons with a father who expounded at length about his and her mother’s lives—some of which was true. Andrew Altschul surveys his father with newfound perspective as a father himself. Tomás Q. Morín takes the game of Operation as a tool to reach toward all pieces of his father. Heather Sellers and Julie Buntin speak with bracing honesty about reconnecting after paternal estrangement. Isle McElroy and Maurice Carlos Ruffin occupy the workspaces with their fathers. Alex Marzano-Lesnevich encounters the shifting power dynamic of aging. Dylan Landis returns from the first anthology to face her psychoanalyst father, and Nayomi Munaweera is back, looking at her parents’ arranged marriage from the paternal side. Throughout, the essays are marked with love, honesty, and exquisite writing.

With tenderness and aplomb in equal measure, these essays plumb the depths of paternal relations.