With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawaii to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It's a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful. Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, a stunning debut, is T Kira Madden’s story. A school girl’s coming of age in wealthy Boca Raton, Florida, the author struggles with her identity and shares with us the good the bad and the ugly. T Kira was born to a white, Jewish shoe developer from Long Island, and a Chinese Hawaiian mother.
“Harrowing and beautiful. What seems most miraculous about Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is the way T Kira Madden forges out of such achingly difficult material a memoir as frank and funny and powerful and surprising as this, her utterly gorgeous debut.” Lauren Groff, author of Florida and Fates and Furies. Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, a memoir from the literary essayist T Kira Madden, is a searing, vivid, and deeply thoughtful take on growing up in a turbulent family in Boca Raton, Florida' - Elle, 'Best Books of Spring' 'Gorgeous. Madden's story is filled. Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden, Mar 05, 2019, Bloomsbury Publishing edition, hardcover.
Reviewed by Bessie Taliaferro
In a gripping scene from T Kira Madden's new essay collection, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, Madden finds her father lying naked on the bathroom floor after he has spent another night at the strip club. It was his birthday. 'I said wake the fuck up, ass-blob,' Madden's mother demands to her husband. She has decided that the three of them will celebrate by riding in a hot air balloon, fully cognizant of her husband's fear of heights. After driving to the Everglades, an hour away from their Boca Raton mansion, they step into the basket to ascend. Her father quickly unravels, pleading for a drink as they float over South Florida. On the way down, they crash into the roof of a house. Shingles fly. 'Good excuse for a home makeover!' says their guide Dwayne, the 'balloon man,' to the disgruntled homeowner.
Madden captures experiences like this, at once funny and sobering, in Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. The captivating memoir is comprised of twenty-six essays—flashes—ranging from a paragraph to twenty pages. She is the paternal niece of the designer Steve Madden, and her parents married after she was born. Madden grew up hiding their drug addiction: 'Secrets are the only love I know.' Her father dies when she is twenty-seven. While grieving, Madden connects with long-lost relatives, some of whom she meets for the first time. The memoir's final essays shed light on her family's history as well as Madden's own difficult childhood.
Long Live is a story of resilience in the face of trauma, and many of the memoir's disturbing incidents are about Madden's father. In 'Chicken & Stars,' Madden describes him drunkenly chasing her and her mother while swinging a baseball bat. More often, though, her father is on the couch, 'facedown on the pink leather cushions,' sleeping so deeply that he appears to be dead. Despite his failures as a parent, John Madden is often captured with warmth and humor. When he dances with Madden in their living room or simply asks about her day, she feels loved and safe. These moments continue into Madden's adulthood and echo throughout the memoir. After her father becomes sober towards the end of his life, he takes her on dates to see movies in the morning. He is always early. In her twenties, Madden comes out as queer after years of hiding, and her father is unwaveringly loving and supportive. In Long Live, happiness is rendered with the same precision as agony, and even abusive characters can be charming.
While Madden's parents are both negligent and tender, her friends are at once vulnerable and cruel. Harley and Nelle, 'all ass and stomach and lip gloss and tongue rings,' welcome Madden, whom they call 'Kinky Chinky,' offering her hard liquor and a sense of belonging. Harley in particular possesses a 'glittering viciousness.' Madden complies with even her most degrading requests ('Wipe my ass for me?'). Despite the abuse, Madden finds a kinship with Harley and Nelle. With fathers that are absent or dead, the unsupervised girls are bound by both pain and freedom. Harley and Nelle offer Madden an escape from the turmoil she experiences at home. Madden is drawn to their recklessness and charisma. The reader—reluctantly—is too.
Madden joins Harley and Nelle's 'sisterhood' after years of being an outcast as a child. Her mother is Chinese-Hawaiian and Madden faces constant racism from her peers. (They are also unrelenting about her headgear, chronic nosebleeds, and backpack with wheels.) Then, Madden 'found pretty.' She describes achieving conventional beauty using violent and unusual images. Tanning beds, for example, are startlingly characterized as 'that blue scream of light baking my naked body.' From a young age, Madden engages in self-harm to change her appearance. She even goes so far as to remove a mole—'speckled and sprouted with a few wired hairs'—from her wrist using a knife in her kitchen. The two-page essay is brimming with images that are typically feminine, like diamonds and lace: 'The blood and hole where my mole used to be glimmers like a garnet under the kitchen lights.'
Madden's raw and vibrant essays—on moles, grief, identity, and so much more—unfold in the present tense, making each experience even more intimate. 'What we are is up in the air,' she writes of the balloon ride on her father's birthday. The reader is with Madden, it seems, standing quietly beneath the fire that is keeping her afloat.
Long Live Tribe Of Fatherless Girls
By T Kira Madden
$27; Bloomsbury Publishing; 304 pages
Anyone who came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s knows the name Steve Madden. Trendy and chunky, the shoes were lusted after by many a young millennial and featured celebrities in their extensive ad campaigns. What was life like for a Florida girl part of this family dynasty, dealing with white-collar crime, drug-addicted parents and her burgeoning queerness to boot?
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is the debut memoir of T Kira Madden ( her first name is only one letter, in honor of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Madden's aunt Tao ). Before rising to fame as an essayist, academic and facilitator of writing workshops for incarcerated individuals, Madden was a privileged preteen coming of age in Boca Raton, Florida. In a series of essays of various length, Madden illustrates her childhood, a time of high highs and low lows.
Madden's mother is Hawaiian and Chinese, her father Jewish and their relationship was forever fraught. Both parents struggled with substance abuse and Madden's father was later investigated by the FBI for his associations with Jordan Belfort ( aka the Wolf of Wall Street ). As Madden attended tony private schools, competed as an equestrian and endured classmates' casual racism and her parents' constant screaming fights, eventually culminating in her father's cross-country move.
She took refuge in crushes on women like her elementary school teacher and a peer on MySpace, the latter of whom she eventually reconnected with as a college student in New York, as well as a fast-talking and fashion-forward duo of friends, who sought excitement and comfort in chasing the next high, riding in cars with the top down and kissing one another—ostensibly for attention, but really for connection.
Tribe Of Fatherless Girls
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is largely successful in generating empathy and understanding for Madden's unique set of circumstances and the obstacles she had to overcome. A few essays read like MFA workshop pieces, especially a childhood memory involving an ill-fated lizard and Madden's descriptive early attempts at masturbation. ( Is every essay collection legally required to include animal cruelty and sticking objects in various orifices out of curiosity? )
But when Madden's writing is good, it's very, very good. Both God and the devil are in the details, as she takes a deep dive into a problematic encounter with high school boys at the age of 12 and its long-standing effects. Her prose is so vivid that readers can practically taste the flavored lip gloss and feel the thick glittery foundation of the early aughts on their faces, melting in the harsh Florida sunlight or under the flashing orbs of a middle school dance. Late in the book, Madden takes a journey into her mother's past, leading to a shocking and emotional revelation. By this point, the reader is completely engaged, frantically turning the pages while holding their breath in anticipation. As the book ends on a hopeful note, the ghosts of Madden's fatherless girls remain, conquering the Florida highways while tempting any man who'll bite and clinging to the endless potential of youth.
T Kira Madden Tribe Of Fatherless Girls
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is now available, wherever books are sold. For more about the author, visit TKMadden.com .