What My Father and I Don’t Talk About is a striking collection of essays that explores the complexities of father-child relationships. The raw vulnerability and diverse voices bring real depth to issues of silence, healing, and hope across different family dynamics. I found myself deeply moved by how each contributor handled their experience with grace and authenticity. Thank you to the publisher for providing this insightful and powerful ARC via NetGalley

Michele Filgate has curated a stellar anthology of personal essays—a perfect companion to What My Mother and I Don't Talk About, both collections about our most primal and often challenging relationships. Extraordinary essayists, such as Joanna Rakoff, Dylan Landis, Kelly McMasters, and Filgate herself, say the words that often go outspoken about the wonderful and less than wonderful fathers, the distant ones and the steadfast ones, the ways our attachments to our fathers can change and deepen over time, about love and forgiveness. These are beautiful stories that will stay with you and expand your understanding of fatherhood and the unique ways we experience it.

Are there things you can't talk to your dad about? If we are being fair, we all do. This is a collection of 16 essays on topics that we wish we could talk about but can't. Hopefully this collection with help spark some of those topics and begin the conversations that we all want to have.

This follow-up to What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About turns toward fathers, and what’s missing or unsaid in those relationships. The sixteen essays are uneven, but several cut deep. Jiordan Castle’s piece about loving her father from a distance lingers. Jaquira Díaz’s exploration of her father’s 1970s Williamsburg and the restlessness they share is vivid and raw. Susan Muaddi Darraj’s “Baba Peels Apples for Me” speaks to the weight immigrant fathers place on their daughters in ways that felt familiar. Tomás Q. Morín’s portrait of absence leaves its own kind of mark.

Some entries skimmed the surface, but the strongest essays are clear-eyed about inheritance, distance, and the complicated love we learn to live inside.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Profound and relatable, this collection reveals the many sides of fatherhood—from warmth and humor to absence and fear. Each essay opens a window into a unique childhood, yet together they trace common threads of tenderness and fragility within complicated paternal bonds. What My Father and I Don’t Talk About offers readers a powerful new perspective on the relationships that have shaped their identities and lives.

What My Father and I Don't Talk About is a collection of essays by different writers edited by Michele Filgate. There are so many tomes devoted to mothers and our relationships with them, but I feel as though there aren't many books that delve into the unspoken bonds between fathers and their children. This books explores this theme and each writer's relationship or lack thereof with their father or with becoming a father themselves.

It was well-edited by Michele Filgate so that you are engrossed in each author's take on their dads, whether they had a very loving and supportive relationship or whether the father left and the child (author) is left to figure out how to cope with their absence. I found that I could see my own relationship with my dad in some of these stories and I could empathize with others. Although my dad was present throughout my childhood, he was essentially a shell of a person - consumed with working to earn the money he believed would buy him the perfect life back in his home country. We get along better now, but as a child, he was not a lovey-dovey dad that I could have conversations with. This book allowed me to reflect on my childhood experiences and how far my father and I have come in developing our father-daughter relationship through the years.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is feeling sentimental or introspective. It was a good read!

Just like the previous installment, this one is a powerful collection. There were some essays—Little Boy Blue & The Man in the Moon, The Daddy Tax, I Was So Hopeful for You—that are more memorable than others, but I appreciated each essay, which isn't always the case in an anthology. I applaud the writers for their ability to lay bare the vulnerabilities of what seems to always be a complex relationship, and I appreciated the breadth of experiences shared here.

An excellent essay anthology on writers' relationships with their fathers. As one writer puts it, the collection concerns the man you simultaneously know better than anyone else and not entirely. This is a book that I'll return to when I'm especially missing my dad. It was particularly poignant reading this the week of Father's Day. Since this is the successor to What My Mother and I Don't Talk About, I'll be checking that out at some point.

A personal look at how we don't always say what we need to. Filgate chose our fathers, which is a good starting point to look at ourselves and decide what we should do differently.

Thank you net gallery for the advanced copy of this book. The essays were heartfelt and had me in tears a few times. Relationships are complicated and our relationships with our parents more so. I would definitely recommend.

When I requested this book from NetGalley, I didn't know much about it, but it sounded interesting. When I realized that I had missed the first book in this series, a viral sensation on Mothers, I almost put this one down to read them in order. Then my inner voice reminded me that this was an entirely new collection, with new contributors—I added it to my to-read list and moved on. The breadth of the stories in this collection is impressive. There are beautiful stories of everyday moments side-by-side life changing stories that just gutted me. A bonus, though not great for my already overflowing to-read pile, this book introduced me to some terrific new authors.

Surprise surprise, this was incredible.

I am SO grateful to Michele Filgate and all those whose words are included here. Just like What My Mother and I Don't Talk About, this is heartwarming and heartbreaking and will make you reflect on your childhood and helps give context to the parent you do or do not hope to grow into.

My only complaint with What My Mother and I Don't Talk About was that man- and boyhood wasn't really addressed (understandably so). This has filled that gap and then some.



(Thank you bunches to Michele Filgate, Andrew Altschul, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Dylan Landis, Jaquira Díaz, Kelly McMasters, Isle McElroy, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Tomás Q. Morín, Robin Reif, Heather Sellers, Jiordan Castle, Nayomi Munaweera, Joanna Rakoff, Julie Buntin and NetGalley for the DRC in exchange for an honest review!)

This book is phenomenal and everyone should read it.

"What My Father and I don't Talk About" is the follow-up to "What My Mother and I Don't Talk About" and is a collection of essays by sixteen authors about their relationships with their fathers. Ranging from humorous to deeply moving, the essays show how both positive and negative relations between fathers and their children have profound affects on the lives of those children, now adults. Each essay is brutally honest and relatable to all readers. I could see my father and myself in every essay. This book is full of discussion worthy topics. especially for book clubs. It will definitely be as wildly popular as the first book.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the authors for the opportunity to read an advanced digital copy of this book.

A vital collection of experiences that incapsulate a relationship with a father and the relationship the writer has with who they have become. Each experience is unique and impactful. There is mighty humor, gratitude, and pain that resonates throughout the collection.

While I have not read What my Mother and I Don’t talk About, I will have to now. The collection of essays is wide ranging, yet all feel so relatable. Obviously you will have your favorites, as I had mine, but they all held their own. Coming up on the 15th anniversary of my dad’s death, it was especially poignant.

This was a very emotive read, each authors impressions of their fathers was somehow unique and yet totally relatable

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the eArc.

This was an experience where the reader learns and understands that their experience is not unique (in the best possible way). These stories showcase a poignant experience of fathers from the view of the children. An account of their own experiences of the men in or absent from their lives who at some point in late childhood you realize your parent, specifically father, exists outside the confines of the attachment to you. Those experience inform the person who will become your parent and what types of parent they choose to be.

This collection of essays explore these experiences which are beautiful, inspiring and tragic. Each essay is separate making this a great book to explore, pick up and put down, and dawdle in. I journeyed and journaled quite a bit through these stories about. my own experiences with my dad and I came away with more compassion, accountability, and frustration all the same.

If you like first hand accounts and enjoyed the previous book, "What my Mother and I don't Talk about" you will also enjoy this one.
All opinions are my own.

What My Father and I Don’t Talk About by Michele Filgate and various other authors.
Nonfiction
Writing: A
Stories: A
Style: A
Best Aspect: Separate short stories by each author made this a quick read. My favorites were Little Boy Blue and The Man in the Moon and It Would Happen Again.
Worst Aspect: Some stories could have been longer and some shorter.
Recommend: Yes.

Lovely and diverse selection of essays about fathers! In this collection, you get to enjoy authors from different generations and backgrounds telling some really great stories, from tales that are heart wrenching to heartwarming and everywhere in between. My favorites were Body Languages, Roots & Rhizomes and In the Direction of Yes.

*Thank you to NetGalley for exchanging an e-ARC of this book for an unbiased review!

What My Father and I Don’t Talk About


These are writers’ narratives about their relationships with their fathers. They are heartwarming and heartbreaking, sweet and sour, enlightening and saddening, and maybe even shocking. They are all different and well worth reading.