adultery
anthology
Ben Cheever
blended family
breastfeeding
Category=JB
Category=JBCC1
Category=VFV
Colin Harrison
coming of age
daughters
drinking
drugs
Elissa Schappell
eq_bestseller
eq_health-lifestyle
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
family life
fatherhood
gay
Kathryn Harrison
lesbian
lgbtqia
Lynda Barry
motherhood
personal essays
post-nuclear family
queer
queer family
salon.com
sons
Susan Straight
Product details
- ISBN 9780743476867
- Weight: 303g
- Dimensions: 127 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 21 Oct 2003
- Publisher: Atria Books
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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"...these essays are jewels of the unexpected, and in introducing them, I don't want to steal any of their surprise. Suffice it to say that family life...is alive and well, but it is not like anything you ever read about before in your life."
-- Jane Smiley, from the foreword
The nuclear family peaked in 1960 with 45 percent of the American population. Many decades later, the tidy ensemble is rare. Relationships, baby making, sex, dating, divorce -- they aren't what they used to be. But the mainstream media keeps the reality of American life a secret, only leaking the occasional tidbit to remind us that those in "unconventional" configurations are a sad anomaly to be pitied or ignored.
Life As We Know It offers proof in its most engaging form -- the personal essay -- that the big guys have got it wrong. This collection of blunt, lyrical, and often very funny work from award-winning Salon.com tells the true stories about how we live -- of hustling fertility drugs, losing a child, hating dad, and coming to terms with a parent who was the voice of "Frosty the Snowman" on TV. First-time writers and critically acclaimed authors like Amy Bloom, Kathryn Harrison, Susan Straight, and Benjamin Cheever, plumb the familiar to deliver portraits of moments, seasons, and eras that we recognize or long to understand.
-- Jane Smiley, from the foreword
The nuclear family peaked in 1960 with 45 percent of the American population. Many decades later, the tidy ensemble is rare. Relationships, baby making, sex, dating, divorce -- they aren't what they used to be. But the mainstream media keeps the reality of American life a secret, only leaking the occasional tidbit to remind us that those in "unconventional" configurations are a sad anomaly to be pitied or ignored.
Life As We Know It offers proof in its most engaging form -- the personal essay -- that the big guys have got it wrong. This collection of blunt, lyrical, and often very funny work from award-winning Salon.com tells the true stories about how we live -- of hustling fertility drugs, losing a child, hating dad, and coming to terms with a parent who was the voice of "Frosty the Snowman" on TV. First-time writers and critically acclaimed authors like Amy Bloom, Kathryn Harrison, Susan Straight, and Benjamin Cheever, plumb the familiar to deliver portraits of moments, seasons, and eras that we recognize or long to understand.
Jennifer Foote Sweeney was a correspondent in the Los Angeles and London bureaus of Newsweek, a national writer for Newhouse News Service, and a reporter for metropolitan newspapers before becoming editor of Life at Salon.com. She lives in northern California with her husband and two daughters.
