In this deeply moving anthology, editor Michele Filgate assembles an emotional tour de force that excavates the complicated territory of father-child relationships with unflinching honesty. Following her wildly successful “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About,” Filgate returns with sixteen writers who wade into memories both tender and traumatic, examining what remains unspoken between fathers and their children.
Each essay contains multitudes—the joy and pain, absence and presence, freedom and constraint that characterize the ineffable bonds between fathers and their children. What emerges is a nuanced exploration that defies easy categorization and challenges readers to confront their own unspoken familial truths.
The Symphony of Silences
“What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” opens with Filgate’s own essay, “Thumbs-up,” where she reflects on her relationship with her father, a man who showed love through text messages ending with a simple thumbs-up emoji. She writes of visiting him in a nursing home, revealing how they navigate across the silence that has grown between them. This moment of quiet connection—discussing birds rather than addressing the deeper current of his decline—perfectly sets the tone for the anthology. What’s missing from the conversation often speaks volumes.
The strength of this collection lies in its diversity of experiences and its refusal to offer tidy conclusions. Some fathers are absent; others are overbearing. Some relationships are marked by trauma; others by quieter disappointments or unexpected joys. The anthology’s essays reflect these realities without judgment, allowing complexity to breathe through every page.
The Range of Paternal Experience
The most affecting essays plunge readers into moments that simultaneously wound and heal:
- In “Little Boy Blue & the Man in the Moon,” Andrew Altschul explores the complicated divide between becoming a father and understanding his own father’s emotional distance. He writes of watching his father sleeping on the couch: “I envied his quick-wittedness, the easy humor with which he circulated at a party. His ease in the world amazed me. As I grew toward manhood, it shamed me. How would I ever live up to it?”
- Isle McElroy’s heartbreaking “Operation” utilizes the structure of the childhood game to dissect fragments of a relationship with an absent father, concluding with the poignant line: “Life’s full of plenty of chances for us to get this right.”
- Robin Reif’s “The Son” explores the impossible position of being a daughter yearning for the connection and approval reserved for sons in patriarchal families.
- In perhaps the collection’s most emotionally raw piece, Julie Buntin’s “I Was So Hopeful for You” navigates the author’s concurrent experiences of becoming a mother while reconnecting with a father who abandoned her in infancy, revealing how parenthood reshapes our understanding of those who raised—or failed to raise—us.
The Legacy of Absence
A recurring theme throughout the anthology is the vast impact of paternal absence, whether physical or emotional. As Maurice Carlos Ruffin writes in “Body Languages,” “Who was I without my brother? I’d become myself in relation to him.” Many essays explore how children create identities in response to fatherly vacuums, crafting themselves either in opposition to or alignment with these ghostly presences.
“What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” excels at illustrating how we inherit not just genetic traits but emotional patterns from our fathers. In “His Legacy, My Inheritance,” Nayomi Munaweera examines her father’s arranged marriage and its ripple effects through generations. Kelly McMasters’ lyrical “Roots & Rhizomes” uses botanical metaphors to explore how her father’s love of plants shaped her own understanding of connection and resilience.
The Cultural Context
Several essays address how cultural expectations shape father-child dynamics. Susan Muaddi Darraj’s “Baba Peels Apples for Me” offers a poignant exploration of “eldest daughter syndrome” in Palestinian immigrant families. Jaquira Díaz’s “Un Verano en Nueva York” connects her father’s rootlessness to the larger Puerto Rican diaspora experience. These essays importantly situate individual father-child relationships within broader social and cultural frameworks.
Critical Considerations
While the anthology presents a remarkable breadth of perspectives, a few essays occasionally lean toward the self-indulgent, getting lost in metaphorical meanderings that obscure rather than illuminate the central relationship. The collection might have benefited from more voices representing working-class experiences or fathers from diverse geographical settings beyond the American context.
Additionally, the anthology sometimes skews toward experiences of paternal absence or trauma. Though these perspectives are vital, a wider range of functional—if still complicated—father-child relationships might have provided even more textured insights.
The Craft of Testimony
What elevates “What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” is the caliber of writing throughout. These are not merely therapeutic exercises but carefully crafted literary works that transform personal experience into universal insight. The prose shifts beautifully from stark declarations to lyrical passages:
“Once,” writes Heather Sellers in “You Knew About That,” “when I had mono while I was an undergrad and could barely keep my eyes open, my father shipped a heavy care package of canned soups to the apartment I lived in in New Hampshire. Too weak to stand, I crawled to the front door and dragged the box inside, knowing it would get me through the worst of the illness.”
Such moments of tenderness amid pain characterize the anthology’s emotional landscape, creating a multidimensional portrait of fatherhood that refuses simplistic narratives.
Final Assessment
“What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” succeeds precisely where many family-focused anthologies fail—by embracing contradiction and resisting easy resolution. These essays don’t merely expose wounds; they examine the complex tissues of healing, forgiveness, and acceptance that form around them.
For readers of Filgate’s first anthology, “What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” delivers a worthy companion piece that continues her exploration of familial silences with equal nuance and greater maturity. For those new to her editorial vision, the anthology offers a profoundly moving introduction to voices that deserve wide recognition.
Like all significant literary works about family relationships, this collection ultimately teaches us that the things we don’t say to our fathers—and the things they don’t say to us—shape us as powerfully as what is spoken aloud. In bringing these silences into language, Filgate and her contributors have created something truly remarkable: a chorus of voices speaking the previously unspeakable.
Who Should Read This Book
“What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” will resonate with:
- Readers processing their own complicated relationships with fathers
- Those who enjoyed Filgate’s “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About”
- Fans of thoughtful personal essays that transcend mere memoir
- Anyone interested in the evolving cultural conversations around fatherhood
- Those who appreciate literary explorations of family dynamics
Similar Works to Explore
If you appreciate this collection, consider these related works:
- “The Best of Me” by David Sedaris
- “Heavy: An American Memoir” by Kiese Laymon
- “The Collected Schizophrenias” by Esmé Weijun Wang
- “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner
- “The Argonauts” by Maggie Nelson
By turns heartbreaking and healing, “What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” illuminates the shadows that exist between fathers and their children, demonstrating how articulating what has remained unsaid can be both a personal reckoning and a profound act of literary creation. In bringing these sixteen voices together, Filgate has crafted an essential anthology that will linger with readers long after the final page.
