“You’re not an accident of history, Dani,” says Shirley. Her aunt’s response, however, validates her existence. Shapiro’s many books are proudly displayed in Aunt Shirley’s room and Shapiro worries if her aunt will get rid of them when she tells her aunt about the DNA results. In the final chapter of Part II, Shapiro’s 93-year-old Aunt Shirley claimed my heart as much as the character of Paul had when Shapiro goes to visit her. “Who was I without my history?” she asks, bereft. “We thought your father was a hero,” he says, and I felt the acute depth of the Rabbi’s grief and Shapiro’s loss. I was moved to tears by a scene in Chapter 25 when Shapiro visits Rabbi Lookstein. Inheritance is dedicated to him, and one of the epigraphs includes the first two lines of Sylvia Plath’s poem“The Colossus,” written by Plath about her father. I imagine that many readers will find themselves searching for their own fathers-whether they’re alive or deceased, biological or soul fathers-as I did in the beautifully written passages. My father died when my daughter was one year old, and when she asks me about him, I feel the weight of responding, the weight of holding the family narrative.Īs signaled by the word “paternity,” listed second in the subtitle, the exploration of Shapiro’s profound and loving connection to Paul, who died when she was 23 years old, holds a place of prominence. I thought this response to her disclosure was surprising and comical, but as a parent myself, I related to Shapiro’s worry. How will he react when he learns he has a new grandfather who’s not Paul? “Does this mean maybe I won’t end up bald?” Jacob asks. Shapiro is a mother to a college-age son, Jacob, and worries how the results of her DNA test will impact him, the next generation. Belonging to a prominent Jewish family played such a major part in her identity that Shapiro begins to feel conflicted. Is her father still her father? Which of her qualities were inherited through her genes and which are a result of her nurturing father, his hug she waited for each day as a child? I was fascinated by this soulful detective story as Shapiro explores the existential quandary, “Who am I?” Shapiro discovers that Paul, the Orthodox Jewish man who raised her, to whom she felt connected on a neshama, or soul, level is not her biological father. The results delivered the shock of her life. In her fifth memoir, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, Dani Shapiro is prompted by her husband’s interest in genealogy and takes a DNA test.
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
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