Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

I wanted to read Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity as soon as it came out, but it is a daunting looking book even for someone like me who enjoys reading tomes. It is over seven hundred pages even without the references and acknowledgments. I visited a friend’s house, and it was sitting on her couch so I got to thumb through it. I was more intrigued, but now had faced to face the reality of carrying this heavy load. It was after I saw the film adaptation in 2018, a documentary with the same title, which I highly encourage anyone to watch, that I finally committed to reading the book. I actually borrowed, renewed and returned the book multiple times to the library before I actually began to read it, but in late December 2019, I finally borrowed it, began reading it and finally was able to finish it unfortunately because of the global pandemic.
The premise of Far From the Tree is quite simple, but structured like an iceberg. Andrew Solomon, the author, examines how parents, mostly mothers, balance their expectations of what their children will be like versus the reality. The reality could be dissonant because of a disability, circumstances surrounding the child’s birth, the child’s choices or biological/psychological realities that do not meet societal expectations. Solomon interviewed tons of families and never loses sight of the human interest angle of the story while trying to glean results for academic purposes. He never strikes a dispassionate pose in a misguided attempt to gain credibility. If anything, he does the opposite by counting himself among their number, but interestingly never devotes a chapter to his identity, being a homosexual, probably out of a tacit way of acknowledging that he is simultaneously already an expert on that topic and not capable of entirely examining it from the outside looking in, which is how he approaches the other subjects: being deaf, a dwarf, having down syndrome, being autistic, being schizophrenic, being severely disabled, being a genius, committing a crime, being transgender and being born as a result of rape. Solomon has a degree of tenderness, sensitivity and love for his subjects that is usually absent in most discourse.
As I read Far From the Tree, I encountered people similar to me who wanted to read it, but skipped the rape chapter for obvious reasons. I met people who had to read it in connection with work or academic requirements. Reading the whole book seems to be a rare phenomenon, and I kind of get it. The rape chapter is the hardest chapter to digest because even the most delicate handling of the subject unleashes a torrent of nightmares and made me want to throw the whole planet away. As a horrific bonus, it also includes instances of animal cruelty in case you had miraculously avoided being eternally traumatized. It makes me wonder about the overall layout of the book, i.e. how the chapters should have been arranged. The first and last chapter make sense since they are predominantly about the author and serve as symmetrical bookends, but the ambitious scope of the books themes make it hard to think of a better way to arrange them. It felt as if the severely disabled chapter needed a different, more descriptive title to distinguish it from the other chapters and perhaps it needed to be the first chapter. Of course, if you put the rape chapter at the end instead of near the middle, then you run the risk of not reading the rest of the book at all. I do not regret reading this chapter and think that it is possible to do so and not rock yourself in a fetus position for the rest of your life, but it is far from easy.
I was pleasantly surprised that I related most to the children in the down syndrome chapter of Far From the Tree. I am not calling myself a genius, but when I was younger, based on grooming and school acceptance alone, it is definitely the category that others may guess was the most applicable. Ha! Those people are disappointed now. I related to how they immersed themselves in whatever culture they loved, and their vision of community, especially their frustration at recognizing the reality and how impossible it is to ever become a part of it.
I learned the most from the schizophrenic chapter of Far From the Tree. If you can only read one chapter in this book, I would recommend this one. I have lived for over four decades, and all my conceptions about schizophrenia were completely wrong probably because we stigmatize anyone with any level of mental health issues, but also popular culture depictions. Considering how mental health issues affect how you get seen and treated in the public sphere, but how little knowledge there actually is about these issues, it seems as if it should be mandatory reading for anyone who has to deal with people even if you are not in law enforcement or the judicial system.
If there is a chapter in Far From the Tree that will make you want to march in the streets if you have a heart, it is the transgender chapter. There is one story in which the state government is literally abusing a trans girl, ripped her from her parents and is making her adhere to the gender norms of her natal gender because the government thought the parents were abusive by making her dress like a girl instead of recognizing that the child wanted to do that. Just the amount of stories of alleged experts and officials imposing their theories on actual people, specifically children, then ruining their lives while congratulating themselves for curing them was horrific. At least on some level, people agree in theory that rape is wrong though some of those same people will bend over backwards to make sure that nothing is actually defined as rape, but because being transgender is still a debate in most regions, it made me want to call the Rainbow Railroad and deploy it in the US. We may not be getting judgment, but it is deserved.
Far From the Tree is obviously not an easy read. It is better to devote as much time as you can to reading a chapter before putting the book down because there are so many names, it can get confusing if you try to read it in small chunks as I did whenever I had a spare moment. In spite of its challenging scope, it was also the kind of book that I never wanted to end because I wanted to keep following these people and make sure that they were alright. Solomon’s masterpiece is a perfect example of balance, rigor and love. I highly recommend it.