\u201cOther times I sat with my book, quietly reading, but secretly waiting and hoping for this special treat. Even if I had already just eaten the same food, or even if it was some dish I did not particularly like, these tastes of my father’s food from his plate in the back room of his office had an enchantment to them that was delicious and magical, and precious. They form the fondest and closest memories I have of warm moments shared with my father. There were not many.\u201d<\/p>\n
My relationship with my parents, particularly my father, was always shallow. Reading this section of Zami made me have to look away from the page and breathe. An action that multiple of the texts we have read this year has compelled me to do, but this breath was particularly deep. \u00a0It was always the small memories that clung to me the hardest, and especially after his death, it is interesting to examine what remains in my mind.<\/p>\n
I feel that every child that has a slightly estranged relationship with their father has a common thread that runs through all of their memories, an immortalized place they travel to where smiles and understanding prevailed over darkness and disconnect. For Audre Lorde, this place was her father\u2019s office at lunch time, and for me, it was Sunday morning, sun streaming in through my mother\u2019s lace curtains, both our feet propped up on the coffee table. My father figured himself to be a blue-collar philosopher and knower of all things important, and unsurprisingly he read voraciously. I, too, read considerably when I was a kid, but this tapered off in high school at the onset of his cancer diagnosis and the increasing severity of my schoolwork, leaving him to always complain on the weekends when I opted to go out with my friends to see a movie or get breakfast, rather than spending the morning with him in contemplative silence. But sometimes, when my plans fell through, or I felt like trying to break through his gnarled and protective exterior, we would sit on the couch and read. He favored historical fiction, Thomas Pynchon or Erik Larson, whether I would usually go for fantasy or poetry. The book itself really didn\u2019t matter, all that did was that we were reading together, a scholar and his prot\u00e9g\u00e9e. After a certain period of time had passed, he would mark his page, slowly turn to me, and ask, \u201cSo Lily, what do ya say?\u201d, with a mischievous grin on his face. Then we would exchange our insights on the morning\u2019s prose, and maybe, if I was lucky and if he was in a good enough mood, some stories. I coveted the times where I managed to squeeze a few details from him about his life before my existence and devoured every word he managed to spit out. I had to harness reading, use it as a bargaining tool in order to get what I wanted, because if he saw me expressing similar interest in the activity, it created a common ground from which to bond.<\/p>\n
The term father can be abrasive and impassive, as illustrated by Audre\u2019s relationship with her father and the experiences I\u2019ve had with my own. It prioritizes family power dynamics and superiority, rather than emotional connection. The last time I referred to my father as \u2018Dad\u2019 was when I was just leaving childhood, as \u2018Dad\u2019 was far too casual for his now adult daughter to call him. Nevertheless, although my negative memories with my father tend to outweigh the positive, when I think of him, it\u2019s always on some sunny Sunday morning as I read my latest literature, the sun pouring in to keep me company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cOther times I sat with my book, quietly reading, but secretly waiting and hoping for this special treat. Even if I had already just eaten the same food, or even if it was some dish I did not particularly like, these tastes of my father’s food from his plate in the back room of his … Continue reading Book Club<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4639,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4639"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}