You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
boldfacejace 's review for:
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
by T Kira Madden
In Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, Madden illuminates what a strange and dark journey girlhood is, often with a retrospective humor, but not while dismissing the emotional weight of it. Our culture mocks and dismisses preteen interests as teeny bopper bullshit, but these times are often very vulnerable and alienating, as we tried to cope with our burgeoning sexuality and mixed messages: simultaneously being infantilized and told we need to grow the fuck up. We reacted by trying to prove how mature and adult we were in all the wrong ways. I wonder how many women my age were being sexually assaulted by older boys while supposedly at the mall. We didn’t talk about this, and it was normalized. At its best, this book reveals how young, impressionable women readily accept unhealthy friendships and relationship over the alternative of isolation and rejection, and how we spend much of our life thereafter healing from them.
Facets of Madden identity— queer, Hawaiian, Chinese, Jewish, and upperclass, with a famous shoe empire uncle, came together at an atypical intersection and further complicated the already confusing and awkward navigation to adulthood. Madden didn’t fit the “tidy American norm” that we are conditioned to believe exists, and her girlhood was without role models who were fully able to relate to her experience: no attentive parents, no people in stories and television who looked like her, no genuine friendships, no present older siblings. Despite her parents’ disappointments, carelessness, and bad habits, (having an auspicious start as a family, as her mom was her father’s mistress) she loves them fiercely. With distance and reflection Madden captures a painful conflict many adults have: realizing your parents aren’t perfect.
The memoir’s 90s nostalgia allusions— fangirling over Hansen, sparkly butterfly clips, roll over Soffee shorts— often came across as heavy handed in the beginning, but I do think they attributed to a collective and shared experience many women our age had. The book’s structure was also jarring with the random inclusion of photos just near the end, but Madden’s raw writing reigned supreme over all structural inconsistencies. Girl can write.
Maddens life was bizarre but ironically, in sharing her unique circumstances, she reveals how universal our emotional experiences are. You will find yourself emotionally invested, rooting for her, and perhaps also reconciling some demons of your own you thought you had left in the past with your Bonnie Bell lip balm and palpable insecurities.
Facets of Madden identity— queer, Hawaiian, Chinese, Jewish, and upperclass, with a famous shoe empire uncle, came together at an atypical intersection and further complicated the already confusing and awkward navigation to adulthood. Madden didn’t fit the “tidy American norm” that we are conditioned to believe exists, and her girlhood was without role models who were fully able to relate to her experience: no attentive parents, no people in stories and television who looked like her, no genuine friendships, no present older siblings. Despite her parents’ disappointments, carelessness, and bad habits, (having an auspicious start as a family, as her mom was her father’s mistress) she loves them fiercely. With distance and reflection Madden captures a painful conflict many adults have: realizing your parents aren’t perfect.
The memoir’s 90s nostalgia allusions— fangirling over Hansen, sparkly butterfly clips, roll over Soffee shorts— often came across as heavy handed in the beginning, but I do think they attributed to a collective and shared experience many women our age had. The book’s structure was also jarring with the random inclusion of photos just near the end, but Madden’s raw writing reigned supreme over all structural inconsistencies. Girl can write.
Maddens life was bizarre but ironically, in sharing her unique circumstances, she reveals how universal our emotional experiences are. You will find yourself emotionally invested, rooting for her, and perhaps also reconciling some demons of your own you thought you had left in the past with your Bonnie Bell lip balm and palpable insecurities.