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A review by melirose1998
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden
4.75
This book made me feel… so many things. T. Kira Madden wrote such a moving memoir. It’s embedded with vulnerability brought from her experiences of loss, grief, trauma, but also of hope. Through this book, I was able to witness her mistakes, but also her growth. Her writing is so distinct and full of imagery… I thought I was right there with her, every step of the way. The good, the bad, the ugly, you get through it all.
I cried. I giggled, I gasped. If this was a physical book I would’ve thrown it out of frustration. Since it was an ebook through the library though, I just had to plop it down on my bed, breathe, and then go back to it. I legitimately couldn’t stay away for more than a few hours.
I think everyone should read this book, though there are many, many TW’s, such as Drug abuse, Sexual assault, Addiction, Death of parent, Racism, Minor Abortion, Pregnancy, Adult/minor relationship.
Quotes: “I love when this happens in movies, on TV, in the books I read: a boy comes for a girl and then the father suddenly loves the girl more, steps up, becomes protective. No boys or men have ever desired a fatherless girl. I have always wanted this complication.”
“There is a tenderness between two people who desire so much more than what they can have, who reach for the cards they have not been dealt, two girls who will soon be ridiculed for exposing their hairy backs at a bar mitzvah service—Did you goats escape from the petting zoo?— who will spend the next few years quietly shaving each other down the spine in an empty bathtub, bleaching each other’s mustaches, helping each other vomit up cheese fries no pastries; these little tasks that seem, to us, to so many young girls, like the very membrane between a life of being seen and no life at all.”
“I love it when my father asks me questions. These moments come in slivers; they’re bright and fleeting, and, when I catch the insides of them, I feel like the most important man in the world is really listening to me, and with the power of one of his nods or uh hush, or sures, or laughs, I, too, am important.”
“A body, severed, does not die right away. It fights, thrashes. Every part of it remembers.”
“My father has never been a bedroom father, a kitchen father, a Auckland father, an office father, a roof father; he is a father of the living room couch.”
“She says things like this all the time lately, words like LOVe to describe our suffering. She doesn’t know if I’m old enough to hold the truth in my hands, to measure that.”
“There is nothing I love more than to sink to the bottom of a pool. See how long my body can keep itself from rising.”
“My mother stands in the corner of the living room. She stands stiff and blank-faced as if in a crowded elevator. She’s always in this elevator lately—arms by her side, acting—and I wonder where she goes in her mind. Which floor.. which new view.”
“One has to be beautiful to be chosen like that, you think. Only beautiful girls are taken. Angelic, white girls. Adored and obsessed over. Too good for this earth.”
“You wonder when the world will stop hurting you. You respond.”
“Do you feel that he assaulted you? You ask. No, she says. i think he only ever wanted love.”
“I found pretty in stupid. I found pretty when my father began referring to me as daughter instead of son when he got a call to move to New York, get out of town. The way he said, You’ll be fine staying here, growing up this way. You’re already such a good woman.”
“No one can hurt you the way a mother can. No one can love you the way a mother can.”
“Will life always be this nervous? I ask, beneath the tissues.”
“I just don’t want to be alone. Why has nobody gotten that yet?”
“It makes me sad—the degree of love I feel for her, the lifesaving power of this purity of purpose—now that i know what it feels like to lose.”
“The world is so unfair, I say. More than you know, says my mother.”
“You ever sit in the car, or in a window seat on the subway, and the car or train next to you starts to move? And you think you’re the one moving? And you’d swear by it? And sometimes, in your stomach, you can even feel it? That. I say. That’s what life’s like now.”
“But that mother-daughter thing—I believe in it now. It’s something that can spool out forever like a string between two cups. A thread that will hum when you need it.”
“The eyes may forget but the body—it remembers.”
I cried. I giggled, I gasped. If this was a physical book I would’ve thrown it out of frustration. Since it was an ebook through the library though, I just had to plop it down on my bed, breathe, and then go back to it. I legitimately couldn’t stay away for more than a few hours.
I think everyone should read this book, though there are many, many TW’s, such as Drug abuse, Sexual assault, Addiction, Death of parent, Racism, Minor Abortion, Pregnancy, Adult/minor relationship.
Quotes: “I love when this happens in movies, on TV, in the books I read: a boy comes for a girl and then the father suddenly loves the girl more, steps up, becomes protective. No boys or men have ever desired a fatherless girl. I have always wanted this complication.”
“There is a tenderness between two people who desire so much more than what they can have, who reach for the cards they have not been dealt, two girls who will soon be ridiculed for exposing their hairy backs at a bar mitzvah service—Did you goats escape from the petting zoo?— who will spend the next few years quietly shaving each other down the spine in an empty bathtub, bleaching each other’s mustaches, helping each other vomit up cheese fries no pastries; these little tasks that seem, to us, to so many young girls, like the very membrane between a life of being seen and no life at all.”
“I love it when my father asks me questions. These moments come in slivers; they’re bright and fleeting, and, when I catch the insides of them, I feel like the most important man in the world is really listening to me, and with the power of one of his nods or uh hush, or sures, or laughs, I, too, am important.”
“A body, severed, does not die right away. It fights, thrashes. Every part of it remembers.”
“My father has never been a bedroom father, a kitchen father, a Auckland father, an office father, a roof father; he is a father of the living room couch.”
“She says things like this all the time lately, words like LOVe to describe our suffering. She doesn’t know if I’m old enough to hold the truth in my hands, to measure that.”
“There is nothing I love more than to sink to the bottom of a pool. See how long my body can keep itself from rising.”
“My mother stands in the corner of the living room. She stands stiff and blank-faced as if in a crowded elevator. She’s always in this elevator lately—arms by her side, acting—and I wonder where she goes in her mind. Which floor.. which new view.”
“One has to be beautiful to be chosen like that, you think. Only beautiful girls are taken. Angelic, white girls. Adored and obsessed over. Too good for this earth.”
“You wonder when the world will stop hurting you. You respond.”
“Do you feel that he assaulted you? You ask. No, she says. i think he only ever wanted love.”
“I found pretty in stupid. I found pretty when my father began referring to me as daughter instead of son when he got a call to move to New York, get out of town. The way he said, You’ll be fine staying here, growing up this way. You’re already such a good woman.”
“No one can hurt you the way a mother can. No one can love you the way a mother can.”
“Will life always be this nervous? I ask, beneath the tissues.”
“I just don’t want to be alone. Why has nobody gotten that yet?”
“It makes me sad—the degree of love I feel for her, the lifesaving power of this purity of purpose—now that i know what it feels like to lose.”
“The world is so unfair, I say. More than you know, says my mother.”
“You ever sit in the car, or in a window seat on the subway, and the car or train next to you starts to move? And you think you’re the one moving? And you’d swear by it? And sometimes, in your stomach, you can even feel it? That. I say. That’s what life’s like now.”
“But that mother-daughter thing—I believe in it now. It’s something that can spool out forever like a string between two cups. A thread that will hum when you need it.”
“The eyes may forget but the body—it remembers.”