Title & author
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden
Synopsis
While the story does focus on how Madden’s relationship with her father influences who she becomes, the story predominantly turns into one about how Madden is not defined by her fatherlessness, rather by those that were there for her (which does include both her father at times, and even herself). Ultimately, this focus allows the exploration of Madden’s development as a queer, biracial woman in an oppressive society.
Who should read this book
Fans of You Exist Too Much and Luster
What we’re thinking about
What it means to be a child and what it means to be a parent
Trigger warning(s)
Physical violence, sexual violence, substance abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, slurs, abortion, abandonment, sexism, racism, antisemitism
How does our family, whether blood or chosen, shape who we become? This is the question that runs through T Kira Madden’s Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir (Bloomsbury, 2019). From the title alone, a reader can expect the story to emphasize how Madden’s father—or, rather, lack of—shapes her upbringing. And while the story does focus on how her relationship with her father influences who she becomes, the story predominantly turns into one about how Madden is not defined by her fatherlessness, rather by those that were there for her (which does include both her father at times, and even herself). Ultimately, this focus allows the exploration of Madden’s development as a queer, biracial woman in an oppressive society.
The daughter of an unmarried couple, Madden is primarily raised by her mom. After a few years, her father marries her mother, moving into their home. Yet, still, his presence is not immediately natural. “This here is your father and Hello, I’m your father,” Madden remembers being told (Madden, 4). “He slips up often and calls me Son” (4). Despite him being her father, they do not immediately possess a familiar relationship—introductions and mixed-up pet names indicate a hesitancy, a lack of ‘real’ fathership, despite his physical presence. And as their relationship becomes more familiar and close, it never truly becomes tangible—her father becomes more of a presence in her mind, yes, but his addictions, his abandonment, and his eventual passing threaten Madden’s status as a “girl with a father.” In the same way one might challenge whether a tree makes a sound as it falls alone in a forest, Madden questions whether a physically absent father means she has one at all. “Your father was never a great father,” Madden writes, “but, when sober, he was always a great man” (107).
What’s interesting is that there are other relationships in Madden’s life that mirror abandonment, similar to her father’s, yet these relationships do not make her a “motherless” girl or a “friendless” girl—and perhaps we can read that as such because of the constant, quiet moments in these relationships that help Madden’s identity take hold. “All of the reasons [Madden’s mother] did anything—the wrong things, the strange things, the dangerous, the sublime—the reasons she does any of it, still, is to protect [her]. Remember this” (3). Within the very first pages of the title, Madden emphasizes the role her mother plays, stressing that, despite the ups and downs we will come to read, her mother’s commitment and presence are constant. Through her mother, Madden learns about strength, believing her mother “is strong in ways I won’t comprehend until I am much older” (85). And with Nelle and Harley—the girls that find her when it seems as if nobody is there—Madden forms the “tribe of fatherless girls,” taking solace in one another and maturing, Madden beginning to acknowledge her sexuality (139). And though the impact of their casual racism towards Madden (their use of nicknames, for example) is not for us to determine, Madden does choose to make these moments extremely visible, suggesting that they did have an effect on who she becomes—a thread that later returns, in discussion with her mom (129, 253). And, finally, her half-brothers. After filing a restraining order against a sexual assailant, it is one of them who “buys me swirled cones of ice cream, takes me out on the deck to look at the sea” (183).
While reading the memoir, we can’t help but question what makes someone “fatherless?” Is it the physical absence? The metaphorical? We can even question how the gender binary plays a role in expectations of parenthood. But in the final chapters of the story, it becomes clear that the focus is not on Madden’s identity as fatherless, rather how she and the women around her are not tied to men and patriarchal standards. Part III, Tell the Women I’m Lonely, begins after her father’s death. For the first time, Madden is truly fatherless. Yet the story evolves, emerges into her mother’s lineage, tracing her family’s move from Hawai’i to the mainland through the eyes of her mother, her aunt, and her grandmother. “My baby may be fatherless but she’ll always have women” her mother says when pregnant with Madden (290). These women in Madden’s life are not tied to the men around them and their expectations—rather, they determine their strength, their unity, and their identities.
The story ends how it begins—unfinished. Madden’s memoir displays a break from traditional family roles, and perhaps this extends into the structure of the story as well. Can we correlate the challenge to patriarchal expectations to the challenges to linearity and conclusiveness? Perhaps. Or, perhaps, it is simply a story that cannot be wrapped up, Madden acknowledging the fluidity of life. Whatever the reason, it is through the story’s structure that we as readers see how Madden’s identity forms, how she comes to be who she is by the time we close the page. We see her as not someone fatherless, rather as someone who is full, inspired and held closely by the women in her life that encircle her.
“No one can hurt you the way a mother can. No one can love you the way a mother can.”
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