Unearthing
A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 2023 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR NONFICTION
For readers of Crying in H Mart and Wintering, an unforgettable memoir about a family secret revealed by a DNA test, the lessons learned in its aftermath, and the indelible power of love.
Three months after Kyo Maclear’s father dies in December 2018, she gets the results of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her are not biologically related. Suddenly Maclear becomes a detective in her own life, unravelling a family mystery piece by piece, and assembling the story of her biological father. Along the way, larger questions arise: what exactly is kinship? And what does it mean to be a family?
Thoughtful in its reflections on race and lineage, unflinching in its insights on grief and loyalty, Unearthing is a captivating and propulsive story of inheritance that goes beyond heredity.
What gets planted, and what gets buried? What role does storytelling play in unearthing the past and making sense of a life? Can the humble act of tending a garden provide common ground for an inquisitive daughter and her complicated mother? As it seeks to answer these questions, Unearthing bursts with the very love it seeks to understand.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Maclear (Birds Art Love) meditates on genealogy and family secrets in this impressive memoir. In 2019, three months after the man who raised her died, Maclear discovered through a DNA test that he was not her biological father. She first sought the truth about her parentage from her Japanese mother, whose health was rapidly declining, but was forced to find most of the answers herself. In short sections named for the 24 seasons of the traditional Japanese calendar, Maclear unravels her family's history, exploring how her surrogate father's infidelity, her parents' infertility, and her mother's secrets influenced her own views on love and family: "Marital love is extreme. It is stamina," she writes. "Marital love with complications or doubts is not a fiasco. It is a marriage." Throughout, Maclear finds beauty in the natural world, tapping into interests, such as gardening, that she inherited from her mother: "I tend the soil for my sons now. In my mother's shadow, I am learning how love vacillates." As she uncovers previously unknown Jewish ancestry, she expands her understanding of her own mixed-race heritage, and the ways blood relationship have and haven't impacted her sense of self. Maclear's precise, hypnotic prose will appeal to readers of Margaret Renkl. This quiet story lingers.
