Dani Shapiro & Abraham Verghese | JCCSF
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- Опубліковано 13 вер 2024
- DNA, Secrets & Inheritance
What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us?
In 2016, celebrated writer and memoirist Dani Shapiro took a genetic test on a whim, believing that she knew her history well - the daughter of Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews, raised on her father’s stories of their family and ancestors. But her DNA revealed that the man she’d known as her father for her whole life was not biologically related to her. With this news, her history - and the entire life she had lived - suddenly crumbled beneath her.
Shapiro’s instant New York Times bestselling memoir, Inheritance, published to wide acclaim earlier this year, is about secrets - secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. Hear how Dani Shapiro lost and found herself via DNA testing, and how her life has changed since publishing Inheritance. She is joined by Dr. Abraham Verghese for this fascinating exploration of genealogy, paternity and love.
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#memoir #nytimesbestseller #genealogy
I was 23, married to a man older than I was who had his vasectomy unsuccessfully reversed. We were working with an infertility gynecologist at Stanford. I had an appointment to be donor inseminated in a week, when I realized that bringing in a child to what had become a strained marriage was not the right thing for anyone. I backed out. I had a total emotional meltdown. My instincts were right...it wasn't the right thing to have done. But I came so close to doing this that this resonates into my heart and soul.
My bookclub just had our book discussion about Dani Shapiro's book Inheritance, and we all enjoyed it. It brought a lot of discussion about identity; how our environment shapes us verses DNA.
I am so happy to have come across this on UA-cam as I too have just learned of and found my biological father as well as 5 siblings on Ancestry. I have had the same feelings that you have described. At first I was not sure what to do with what I found on Ancestry. I did decide to write to my biological father and he called me. We have since met. He is 85 years old. I had a wonderful Dad growing up who loved me with all of his heart, but I too always had the feeling of being different. I loved my dad and he will always be my Dad, but meeting my biological father felt like being home. Yes he did feel like the country I was from too. You described that perfectly. We have only just found each other and everything is new.
Just finished Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese - anyone else see an irony here? 😀
Phillipos, Mariamma
❤
I want to suggest that her husband suspected or knew the "unthought known". That's just my mind. I know I am wrong. But the thought jumped through my mind.
Interesting. Hmmmm.