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Title details for Finding My Father by Deborah Tannen - Wait list

Finding My Father

His Century-Long Journey from World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow

by Deborah Tannen
Deborah Tannen
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A #1 New York Times bestselling author traces her father’s life from turn-of-the-century Warsaw to New York City in an intimate memoir about family, memory, and the stories we tell.
“An accomplished, clear-eyed, and affecting memoir about a man who is at once ordinary and extraordinary.”—Forward
Long before she was the acclaimed author of a groundbreaking book about women and men, praised by Oliver Sacks for having “a novelist’s ear for the way people speak,” Deborah Tannen was a girl who adored her father. Though he was often absent during her childhood, she was profoundly influenced by his gift for writing and storytelling. As she grew up and he grew older, she spent countless hours recording conversations with her father for the account of his life she had promised him she’d write. But when he hands Tannen journals he kept in his youth, and she discovers letters he saved from a woman he might have married instead of her mother, she is forced to rethink her assumptions about her father’s life and her parents’ marriage. 
In this memoir, Tannen embarks on the poignant, yet perilous, quest to piece together the puzzle of her father’s life. Beginning with his astonishingly vivid memories of the Hasidic community in Warsaw, where he was born in 1908, she traces his journey: from arriving in New York City in 1920 to quitting high school at fourteen to support his mother and sister, through a vast array of jobs, including prison guard and gun-toting alcohol tax inspector, to eventually establishing the largest workers’ compensation law practice in New York and running for Congress. As Tannen comes to better understand her father’s—and her own—relationship to Judaism, she uncovers aspects of his life she would never have imagined.
Finding My Father is a memoir of Eli Tannen’s life and the ways in which it reflects the near century that he lived. Even more than that, it’s an unflinching account of a daughter’s struggle to see her father clearly, to know him more deeply, and to find a more truthful story about her family and herself.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 15, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593393123
      • File size: 266250 KB
      • Duration: 09:14:41

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 29, 2020
      Tannen (You Just Don’t Understand) examines the life of her father in this passionate memoir. A giant in her life (“he’s the parent I felt an affinity with, the one who understood me”), Eli Tannen possessed an even temper that masked an unhappy past. He emigrated from Poland to New York City in 1920 and quit school at 14 to support his mother and sister. He eventually went to college and earned a law degree during the Depression, but couldn’t find work as a lawyer for nearly 30 years, when he started a legal practice in support of worker’s compensation. To support his wife (who thought he was ugly and grew to dislike him) and family, he held various jobs, including as a prison guard and garment cutter. He was a prolific letter writer; Tannen notes, “my inclination to write traced to my father.” From him she “learned to listen for unspoken meanings in people’s conversations.” While visiting him in her parents’ Westchester condo, she uncovers letters detailing her father’s relationship with another woman just before his marriage. She then speculates what his life might have been, concluding, “She was better suited to my father... a kind, compassionate intellectual.” Tannen’s readers will appreciate this tender-hearted paean to her father.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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