Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity, Volume 2

Front Cover
Simon and Schuster, 2012 - Family & Relationships - 962 pages
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Books for a Better Life Award, and one of The New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2012, this masterpiece by the National Book Award–winning author of The Noonday Demon features stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children, but also find profound meaning in doing so—“a brave, beautiful book that will expand your humanity” (People).

Solomon’s startling proposition in Far from the Tree is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, and Solomon documents triumphs of love over prejudice in every chapter.

All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent should parents accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Drawing on ten years of research and interviews with more than three hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges.

Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original and compassionate thinker, Far from the Tree explores how people who love each other must struggle to accept each other—a theme in every family’s life.
 

Contents

Son
1
Deaf
49
Dwarfs
115
Down Syndrome
169
Autism
221
Schizophrenia
295
Disability
355
Prodigies
405
Rape
477
Transgender
599
Father
677
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About the author (2012)

Andrew Solomon was born in New York City on October 30, 1963. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University and a Master's degree in English at Jesus College, Cambridge. He has written for numerous publications including The New York Times and The New Yorker. He has written several non-fiction books including The Irony Tower, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, and The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which won the 2001 National Book Award. He also wrote the novel A Stone Boat. He is a lecturer in psychiatry at Cornell University and special advisor on LGBT affairs to the Yale School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry.