Michele Filgate’s follow-up anthology to her wildly successful “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About” takes readers on another intimate journey—this time through the complex terrain of father-child relationships. As with its predecessor, this collection strikes at the heart of family dynamics, delving into territories that often remain unexplored in everyday conversation. Through sixteen powerful essays, writers of diverse backgrounds excavate their relationships with their fathers, revealing layers of love, resentment, absence, and connection that shape these fundamental bonds.
What makes this anthology exceptional is not merely the caliber of writing—though it is consistently excellent—but the raw vulnerability with which these accomplished authors approach their subject. From fathers who were physically present but emotionally distant to those who abandoned their families, from the supportive to the abusive, each essay captures a unique facet of paternal relationships that resonates with universal themes.
The Many Faces of Fatherhood
“What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” opens with Filgate’s own essay, “Thumbs-up,” which immediately establishes the conflicted nature of many father-child relationships. Filgate’s father, who suffered a stroke and now lives in a nursing home, was both loving and unreliable, present and absent. Her memories of him are filled with walks and adventures, but also with financial instability and emotional volatility. The essay sets the tone for much of what follows—complex portraits of men who, despite their flaws, remain central to their children’s self-understanding.
Andrew Altschul’s “Little Boy Blue & the Man in the Moon” offers one of the collection’s most incisive examinations of how masculinity shapes fatherhood across generations. Altschul deftly weaves together his experiences of being fathered and becoming a father, questioning the American cultural expectations that allow men to remain emotionally disengaged from their children. With unflinching honesty, he confronts the ways his own father relied on “bravado” to mask vulnerability, and how this inherited pattern threatens to infect his relationship with his son.
Several contributors explore the theme of absent fathers in “What My Father and I Don’t Talk About”. Isle McElroy’s “It Would Happen Again” recounts childhood Saturdays accompanying a father who worked as an electrician, fixing strangers’ homes while his own family life remained in disrepair. The essay beautifully captures how children often participate in their parents’ deceptions, including the willful blindness to a father’s cross-dressing, simply to maintain the relationship.
In “I Was So Hopeful for You,” Julie Buntin chronicles her attempts to forge a connection with a father who left when she was an infant. Her essay powerfully contrasts her own overwhelming love for her newborn son with her father’s casual admission that he “never bonded” with her as a baby. This juxtaposition reveals the lasting wounds of paternal abandonment while offering a path toward healing through breaking cycles.
Intergenerational Patterns and Cultural Expectations
One of the anthology’s strengths lies in its exploration of how cultural expectations shape fatherhood. Susan Muaddi Darraj’s “Baba Peels Apples for Me” examines the unique burdens placed on immigrant fathers and their eldest daughters. As a Palestinian American, Darraj captures how her father’s strict limitations on her teenage freedom were rooted in fear and cultural preservation rather than simple control. The essay evolves into a powerful meditation on how understanding can develop over time, particularly during moments of shared grief.
Similarly, Nayomi Munaweera’s “His Legacy, My Inheritance” delves into how arranged marriages in South Asian culture can create “a legacy of socially sanctioned child abuse.” Her essay traces her father’s journey from an arranged marriage in Sri Lanka to a life separated from his wife—a separation that brings him unexpected joy in his eighties. This late-life transformation prompts Munaweera to reconsider her understanding of both parents.
Fathers as Storytellers
Several essays examine how fathers shape their children through the stories they tell—or don’t tell. Joanna Rakoff’s “A Storybook Childhood” reveals how her understanding of her parents was built on her father’s carefully constructed mythology, which portrayed her mother as a privileged “country girl” when in fact she had been born out of wedlock and shuttled between relatives. Rakoff’s discovery of this deception leads to a profound reconsideration of whose stories she had believed and why.
Similarly, Jaquira Díaz’s “Un Verano en Nueva York” explores how her father’s stories of his time in New York in the 1970s—a period of liberation and creative exploration—masked deeper traumas, including the accidental death of his first child. As Díaz constructs her own life in New York decades later, she comes to understand how her father’s restlessness mirrors her own.
Breaking Cycles of Damage
What elevates this collection beyond mere memoir is its engagement with larger questions of healing and transformation. Many contributors examine how they’ve struggled to avoid repeating their fathers’ mistakes. In “In the Direction of Yes,” Jiordan Castle documents her decision to cut ties with her father after his second imprisonment, recognizing that self-preservation sometimes requires painful separations—even from loved ones.
Kelly McMasters’ lyrical “Roots & Rhizomes” uses botanical metaphors to explore her father’s passion for gardening and his influence on her life. She writes, “When I opened the door to our apartment, I felt full. I had a partner. I fell apprehensively, but finally, into home.” This essay demonstrates how children can selectively inherit the best parts of their parents, like “loving hands.”
Critical Assessment
While the collection excels in emotional depth and literary quality, a few essays occasionally slide into sentimentality or rely too heavily on the redemptive arc of understanding a father’s flaws. Some readers might find the predominantly middle-class perspective limiting—most contributors are educated professionals whose struggles, while emotionally significant, rarely involve true economic hardship. Additionally, the collection could benefit from more diverse representations of fatherhood in non-traditional family structures.
However, these minor criticisms do not diminish the anthology’s overall impact. Filgate has curated a powerful collection that balances literary merit with emotional accessibility. The essays work both independently and in conversation with each other, creating a mosaic of fatherhood that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Key Themes and Insights
What My Father and I Don’t Talk About reveals several recurring themes about father-child relationships:
- Physical vs. emotional presence – Many contributors had fathers who were physically present but emotionally distant
- The impact of cultural expectations on how men parent
- Intergenerational trauma and its manifestation in fathering
- The power of storytelling in shaping family narratives
- The possibility of healing even in the most damaged relationships
Final Verdict
“What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” succeeds brilliantly as both literary anthology and emotional exploration. These essays will resonate with readers who have complex relationships with their fathers—which is to say, nearly everyone. The collection reminds us that understanding our fathers, with all their complexities and contradictions, is essential to understanding ourselves.
Like its predecessor, this anthology feels both timely and timeless. In an era when traditional conceptions of masculinity are being reexamined, these essays offer nuanced perspectives on how fathers influence our lives, for better and worse. They remind us that breaking silences—speaking about the things we don’t talk about—can be the first step toward healing.
For readers who appreciated Filgate’s first anthology or works like “The Best American Essays,” this collection is essential reading. It demonstrates the continued power of the personal essay to illuminate universal truths through individual experience. Most importantly, it creates space for conversations many families struggle to initiate, offering both validation for difficult experiences and hope for deeper understanding.
In the end, what makes “What My Father and I Don’t Talk About” exceptional is not just its unflinching examination of pain and disappointment, but its recognition of the persistent human desire for connection. As Maurice Carlos Ruffin writes in his contribution, “I learned by watching.” Even in their failings, our fathers teach us—sometimes what to do, sometimes what not to do—and these essays bear witness to both lessons with grace, insight, and remarkable compassion.