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Apple, Tree features a slate of compelling essayists who eloquently consider a trait they’ve inherited from a parent. Together, these all-new essays form a prismatic meditation on how we make fresh sense of ourselves and our parents when we see the traces of them that live on in us.
List of contents
Introduction
Lise Funderburg
Predictions
Laura van den Berg
Curtains
Sallie Tisdale
Lies My Parents (Never but Maybe Should’ve) Told Me
Shukree Hassan Tilghman
Better Angels
Clifford Thompson
The Only Light We’ve Got
Angelique Stevens
Household Idols
Avi Steinberg
Just Say the Word
Lizzie Skurnick
All Knotted Up
Dana Prescott
Sisters
Ann Patchett
One Man’s Poison
Kyoko Mori
Unlived Lives
Laura Miller
A Measure of Perversity
Marc Mewshaw
Off, Off, Off, Off, Off
Daniel Mendelsohn
What We Keep
Donna Masini
My Story about My Mother
Mat Johnson
Never Have Just One Boss
Susan Ito
Spending the Sparkle
Jane Hamilton
Around the Table
Lauren Grodstein
This Truth about Chaos
John Freeman
No Indifferent Place
Carolyn Ferrell
And Niriko Makes Four
Lolis Eric Elie
Fragments from the Long Game
Kate Carroll de Gutes
Self-Made Men
Leland Cheuk
The Nut Doesn’t Fall Far from the Fucking Nut Tree
S. Bear Bergman
The Feeding Gene
Karen Grigsby Bates
Acknowledgments
Contributors
About the author
Lise Funderburg is a writer and editor and a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Funderburg’s collection of oral histories,
Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity, has become a core text in the study of American multiracial identity in college courses around the world. Her latest book is
Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home. Her work has appeared in the
New York Times, the
Washington Post, the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
National Geographic,
Salon and the
Nation.
Complete list of contributors: Karen Grigsby Bates, S. Bear Bergman, Kate Carroll de Gutes, Leland Cheuk, Lolis Eric Elie, Carolyn Ferrell, John Freeman, Lauren Grodstein, Jane Hamilton, Susan Ito, Mat Johnson, Donna Masini, Daniel Mendelsohn, Marc Mewshaw, Laura Miller, Kyoko Mori, Ann Patchett, Dana Prescott, Lizzie Skurnick, Avi Steinberg, Angelique Stevens, Clifford Thompson, Shukree Hassan Tilghman, Sallie Tisdale, and Laura van den Berg.
Summary
In this masterful collection of new essays, the apple looks at the tree. Twenty-five writers deftly explore a trait they've inherited from a parent, reflecting on how it affects the lives they lead today - how it shifts their relationship to that parent (sometimes posthumously) and to their sense of self.
