Readin' Vegans--"Inheritance"

For our August 23 online book club we'll discuss INHERITANCE: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, by Dani Shapiro (Anchor Books, 2019). You need not have attended a previous discussion to join us for this one. We'll discuss the book until about 8:30, followed by open conversation. The Zoom link to the discussion is posted on the right, visible to those who RSVP. PLEASE NOTE: THIS LINK DISAPPEARS AT THE MEETUP START TIME, THAT IS, 7:00 PM. We'll be available from 6:50 on to help anyone who might need extra time to connect. You will need a computer, laptop, smartphone or other device with internet access. It's pretty easy; if you're curious, check out https://zoom.us/. If you can't get on, call us at 303-300-2368. We hope to "see" you there! If you'd like to read ahead: Sept. 27 -- The Elephant Whisperer, by Lawrence Anthony Oct. 25 -- The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett (fiction) Nov. 29 (note 5th Tues.) -- Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer ----------------------------------- From the acclaimed, best-selling memoirist, novelist and host of the hit podcast Family Secrets, comes a memoir about the staggering family secret uncovered by a genealogy test: an exploration of the urgent ethical questions surrounding fertility treatments and DNA testing, and a profound inquiry of paternity, identity, and love. In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had casually submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her beloved deceased father was not her biological father. Over the course of a single day, her entire history--the life she had lived--crumbled beneath her. Inheritance is a book about secrets. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that had been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in, a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover. Dani Shapiro's memoir unfolds at a breakneck pace--part mystery, part real-time investigation, part rumination on the ineffable combination of memory, history, biology, and experience that makes us who we are. Inheritance is a devastating and haunting interrogation of the meaning of kinship and identity, written with stunning intensity and precision. "Beautifully written and deeply moving--it brought me to tears more than once."--The New York Times Book Review "As compulsively readable as a mystery novel, while exploring the deeper mysteries of identity and family and truth itself… a story told with great insight and honesty and heart." -- San Francisco Chronicle "[In] her engrossing, compassionate memoir…Shapiro is driven to reckon with questions of heritage, memory, and family that go beyond chromosomes and surnames . . . 'How had I lived my life without being able to answer that first and most fundamental of all questions: Who am I?' Shapiro writes. There is no easy answer here; as in the best writing on the self, the point is the integrity of her search." -- The New Yorker "Inheritance is more than the unraveling of familial secrets; it’s a probing look at what identity means at a time when anyone can open Pandora’s genealogy box." -- LA Times