I had the blessing of participating in a book group made up of medical professionals for work and consequently binge-listened to Dani Shapiro narrate her memoir Inheritance on Audible. Shapiro earnestly narrates the rupture she experienced after a genetic test made her realize the father that raised her is not her biological father. Hailing from a very traditional Ashkenazi Jewish family, the discovery carries an atypical amount of cultural consequence. The memoir narrates Shapiro’s journey tracking down her biological father, an aged, accomplished doctor who was promised anonymity when he donated semen as a medical student. Shapiro also spends the bulk of the memoir unpacking the spiritual and psychological “trauma” (Shapiro’s word) she experienced as a result of the test results.
If that last sentence sounds like an overstatement of the psychological fallout of discovering you have a different biological parent at age fifty-four, most of the medical professionals agree with you. It’s hard not to side-eye when Shapiro talks about her “trauma” as a matter of “survival” several times throughout the text. Shapiro doesn’t help herself by being rather harsh and misunderstanding of her biological father’s initial reluctance to invite her into his life. Many in the group, me included, felt as if Shapiro was rather myopic, failing to see things from other perspectives, be it her mother’s, social father’s, or biological father’s. It’s not that discovering a family secret that morphs the matter of your identity wouldn’t be painful, difficult, and disruptive. It’s just that Shapiro taxes her readers patience by belaboring the issue and failing to approach the new information with curiosity rather than aversion.
It’s not even as if Shapiro didn’t have good people supporting her throughout her journey. Her mother’s surviving friend wisely told her, regardless of biology, “your father is still your father.” A rabbi tells her she could choose to view the test results as a form of cultural exile and unbelonging or as finding an additional home. Shapiro glides over these attempted interventions into her identity crisis, instead choosing to continue to ruminate over her innate sense of being different and not belonging.
While there are great moments of humor in the written version of the text, Shapiro’s earnest delivery sucked the joy out of those moments in the audio book. At one point, Shapiro describes how her childhood photo was used in a Christmas ad, which many found hilarious (including members of her family) because she comes from a very traditional Jewish family, for example. It wasn’t until the book group that realized how funny that moment was, because of Shapiro’s delivery really dampened the effect.
A frustrating narrator isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a book or group discussions, however. It can give a group something to pick apart.
The power of this text lies largely in the conversations it opens in regards to medical ethics and family history. The facilitator of our group mentioned that when she teaches this book to undergrads they erupt with stories of familial scandal. This book can help open discussion about non-traditional parentage, which is much more common than we think yet often secret and unspoken. The book also is a great conversation starter about medical ethics, including the recent artificial insemination fraud scandals that have received national coverage. It is disappointing that Shapiro chose to narrate her personal journey without including a more journalistic and researched history of artificial insemination and other related practices. This book is more about Shapiro then it is about medical ethics to a fault.
I recommend this book for anyone interested in memoir and medical ethics.