narrative essay about my father

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A Father's Legacy: Reflecting on the Narrative of Losing My Dad

Table of contents, introduction, a guiding light and endless love, the unfathomable farewell, navigating the rapids of grief, a continuation of love.

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Essay on My Father

List of essays on my father, essay on my father – my role model and my friend (essay 1 – 500 words), essay on my father – for kids and children (essay 2 – 750 words), essay on my father – long essay for school students (essay 3 – 800 words).

Audience: The below given essays are exclusively written for school students (Class 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 Standard).

Introduction:

My father is my hero and guide in my life. He is the one I look upon whenever I find myself in trouble. My father has been my guiding force for all my major decisions in life. In fact, I have never regretted adhering to his advice as it has always worked for me. He is a hardworking and passionate person. My father has a love for movies. Whenever he gets time, he just loves to watch an old movie. In fact, at times we just fight as to who gets control of the television. But at heart, we love to tease each other and play as well.

My father does not like to sit idle. At times, on holidays if he finds me and my sister doing nothing and just idling our time, he gives us some task or the other. He is also much organised and keeps all his documents in a properly organised manner.

My Father – My Role Model:

My father is my role model for many reasons. First and foremost I admire his passion for work. That is why he is so respected in his office as well. He is always there to help his colleagues even if it is not his work. In fact, one can always see him spending weekends helping others out. Moreover, my father is a simple man. He does not like expensive things and lives an easy and peaceful life. Also, he never shouts on anyone of us. I wonder if he ever gets angry on anything as he takes everything so calmly and takes his time to decide upon things.

My Father – My Friend:

My father is my friend as well. I can discuss everything with my father, even those that I dare not speak in front of my mother. I know that he shall keep it a secret and give the advice I need. He is the one whom I can rely upon blindly during any hour of need, and I know that he shall be there for me.

Importance of My Father in My Life:

My father plays an important role in the family. He is in fact considered as the head of the family. However, I feel that both father and mother have a distinctive role to play in bringing up their children. While on hand my mother has s soft heart, it is my father who shows courage and strength which his children will later on imbibe as their qualities. He can be firm at times, but be rest assured it is always for the benefit of the children.

Conclusion:

There is no doubt that my father’s role is vital in my life. His presence is vital for maintaining the balance and peace in my family. A father is the one who earns the badge of the stricter parent and whose denial of permission for anything means a lot to the children. I also admire my father and try to imbibe his qualities so that I become like him when I grow up.

My father is a person who takes care of my family and loves each one of us dearly. My father acts as the pillar of support and strength for my family.

My father is the person that I admire the most in my life. I can never forget all the childhood memories that I have with him. It is safe for me to say that my father is largely the reason behind my present joy and happiness. I can say that I am the person who I am today and the person that I am growing to be, is all because of the influence he has had and is having on me. He always makes time to play with me and catch up on all the happenings in my life even after the hard work of the day.

My father is one man who is very unique and different. I always feel lucky anytime I remember that he is my father knowing how he has done the very best for me in life. I always feel grateful that I have the opportunity to be his son and be a part of a wonderful family that has a great father like him. My father has shown himself to be a very peaceful and polite person. He seldom scolds me and he is always easy with me. What he tries to do is that he makes sure that I realise the mistake that I have made in a very polite way and helps me to get better and this has been working like magic for many years now.

My father is the leader and head of our family. He is always there for every member of the family to help us in times when we need his advice and direction in taking decisions. Anytime we have a problem, we take it to him, he tries to help us by sharing some of the problems that he also faced in the past that are quite similar to our problem and how he was able to overcome them. He also shares all of his achievements and drawbacks in life and tells us to learn from them.

My father has his personal online marketing business but he never insists any of his children to pursue a career in that same field so that we can take over after him. He does not even try to attract any of us to his business but he tries to teach how we can discover our own passion and fields of interest in life. He does his best to encourage us in the pursuance of our various dreams. I can boldly say that my dad is a very good dad and this is not as a result of him always helping me and being nice to me but because he shows great strength, knowledge, a good helping and nice nature. He also owns very good human relations skills.

My father’s parents were very poor when he was growing up but with hard work and patience, my father was able to become very rich. He uses this as an example to encourage me to always work hard.

I share all of my happy, sad and bad moments with him and he also does the same. He is always around to share with me all of his life experiences and how I can learn from them. My father also tells me all about his day and every event that occurred during the day. He is doing all his best to ensure that I grow up to become a very successful person that has good character and behaviour.

My father always teaches me ethics, humanity and etiquettes of life that can help me in future. My father is always ready and willing to help the people who are needy around us and he tells us that giving is the most important thing in life. My father also teaches my siblings and me how to be happy, healthy and fit throughout our lives.

My father has shown himself to be very good to all the members of my extended family. If anyone of us is facing a particular problem, my father is usually the first person we go to for advice and help. My father has over the years proven to be a person who has a very kind heart and I can boldly say that he is my best friend and my hero.

About My Father:

Appa was born in Coimbatore, the second son and third child in a family of 11 children. His father, my grandfather was a stern man, a respected civil engineer who worked for the colonial British government.

Appa attended the Rishi Valley School in Yercaud, founded on the learning philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurthy. There he learned the value of discipline, respect for hard work, honesty, responsibility and constant learning. He studied electrical engineering at Banaras Hindu University and went on to join Voltas Limited’s air conditioning division. He worked there the rest of his life, and was regarded as brilliant and a genius.

My childhood memories of him are as a stern, strict and not very communicative man. He’d crack the most unhumorous Dad jokes and we’d all grimace and laugh dutifully.

He felt a deep and abiding sense of responsibility towards his own family of birth as well as his marital family. The modest salary he always earned would be divided between these two families, and since he was terrible at currying favour or promoting himself, he never rose within the ranks of Voltas and his income remained quite pathetic till he died. This officially made us a lower-middle class family and our childhoods were frugal, thrifty and austere. A little money meant a lot.

Despite these constraints, Appa planned our futures successfully. When his provident funds were released after his retirement, he used the entire amount, augmented by a bank loan, to buy a house in his two sons’ names. For the rest of our lives, we had a roof over our heads.

Why I like my father:

One of the most remarkable things about Appa was the number of things he was interested in. In Calcutta, he would spend hours outside a tailor’s shop watching him make clothes. After several months, he bought himself a Singer sewing machine. From then, all our clothes, including winter school uniforms, were stitched by him.

He taught himself carpentry — and constructed the sofa sets we used for decades.

He learned dry cleaning — and from then, we would go to school smelling of kerosene in winter.

He was an outstanding cook, and loved cooking. When my mother was immobilized with lymphatic TB, he’d cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for the family in the morning before leaving for work.

Best of all, he was a brilliant musician, gifted in playing the vichitra veena. He had his own Carnatic ‘band’ with a flutist and a mridangam player.

Things I Learned from My Father:

I have slowly realised how much of who I am was shaped by who he was. Like him, I never get bored, and remain fascinated by everything in life. I’m constantly active doing something constructive or educational. I am today two years younger than he was when he died but have started learning to play piano, understand search engine optimisation, UX design and painting.

I learned from him that generosity is a state of mind, not a state of wallet. The number of nameless, faceless poor people he had helped was long, as we learned only after he died. Never demeaning his beneficiaries with a handout, he invited them to repay at their time and speed, but made sure that they did, thus restoring their self-respect.

Without ever speaking about it, he has shown me what it means to be a father, and the meaning of selfless living.

A single incident sums up my relationship with my dad. He wanted me to join the IIT and become an engineer. I wanted to be a writer, a profession he disdained as having no future. Headstrong, in 1969, I stepped out of the train in which my family was relocating from Delhi to Bombay just as the whistle blew. I was bent on living my life my way.

My father, deeply upset, cut me off without a paisa, saying I could jolly well support myself if I was so confident about writing. And so I did, earning enough through writing for the evening papers to pay my rent, college fees and food. Six months later, my father, passing through Delhi in December, visited me to check how his strong-headed son was doing, and saw for himself that I was surviving well enough without borrowing or begging. He visibly swelled with pride.

He hugged me, in one action forgiving me but also forgiving himself. He used the 400 rupees he had received as a Christmas bonus to buy me utensils, a mattress, and other basics.

From that day, he would proudly say, “My son followed his heart rather than my head — and see what a fine job he has done.”

Father , My Father , Relationship

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Essay on My Father for Students and Children

500+ words essay on my father.

Essay on My Father: Usually, people talk about a mother’s love and affection, in which a father’s love often gets ignored. A mother’s love is talked about repeatedly everywhere, in movies, in shows and more. Yet, what we fail to acknowledge is the strength of a father which often goes unnoticed. Father’s a blessing which not many people have in their lives. It would also be wrong to say that every father is the ideal hero for their kids because that is not the case. However, I can vouch for my father without any second thoughts when it comes to being an ideal person.

My Father is Different!

As everyone likes to believe that their father is different, so do I. Nonetheless, this conviction is not merely based on the love I have for him, but also because of his personality. My father owns a business and is quite disciplined in all aspects of life. He is the one who taught me to always practice discipline no matter what work I do.

Most importantly, he has a jovial nature and always makes my mother laugh with his silly antics even after 27 years of marriage. I completely adore this silly side of him when he is with his loved ones. He tries his best to fulfill all our wishes but also maintains the strictness when the need arises.

One of the best things I love about my father is that he has always kept a very safe and open home environment. For instance, my siblings and I can talk about anything with him without the fear of being scolded or judged. This has helped us not to lie, which I have often noticed with my friends.

In addition, my father has an undying love for animals which makes him very sympathetic towards them. He practices his religion devotedly and is very charitable too. I have never seen my father misbehave with his elders in my entire life which makes me want to be like him even more.

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My Father is My Source of Inspiration

I can proudly say that it is my father who has been my source of inspiration from day one. In other words, his perspective and personality together have shaped me as a person. Similarly, he has a great impact on the world as well in his own little ways. He devotes his free time in taking care of stray animals which inspires me to do the same.

My father has taught me the meaning of love in the form of a rose he gifts to my mother daily without fail. This consistency and affection encourage all of us to treat them the same way. All my knowledge of sports and cars, I have derived from my father. It is one of the sole reasons why I aspire to be a cricket player in the future.

To sum it up, I believe that my father has it all what it takes to be called a real-life superhero. The way he manages things professionally and personally leaves me mesmerized every time. No matter how tough the times got, I watched my father become tougher. I certainly aspire to become like my father. If I could just inherit ten percent of what he is, I believe my life will be sorted.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 3 great narrative essay examples + tips for writing.

General Education

A narrative essay is one of the most intimidating assignments you can be handed at any level of your education. Where you've previously written argumentative essays that make a point or analytic essays that dissect meaning, a narrative essay asks you to write what is effectively a story .

But unlike a simple work of creative fiction, your narrative essay must have a clear and concrete motif —a recurring theme or idea that you’ll explore throughout. Narrative essays are less rigid, more creative in expression, and therefore pretty different from most other essays you’ll be writing.

But not to fear—in this article, we’ll be covering what a narrative essay is, how to write a good one, and also analyzing some personal narrative essay examples to show you what a great one looks like.

What Is a Narrative Essay?

At first glance, a narrative essay might sound like you’re just writing a story. Like the stories you're used to reading, a narrative essay is generally (but not always) chronological, following a clear throughline from beginning to end. Even if the story jumps around in time, all the details will come back to one specific theme, demonstrated through your choice in motifs.

Unlike many creative stories, however, your narrative essay should be based in fact. That doesn’t mean that every detail needs to be pure and untainted by imagination, but rather that you shouldn’t wholly invent the events of your narrative essay. There’s nothing wrong with inventing a person’s words if you can’t remember them exactly, but you shouldn’t say they said something they weren’t even close to saying.

Another big difference between narrative essays and creative fiction—as well as other kinds of essays—is that narrative essays are based on motifs. A motif is a dominant idea or theme, one that you establish before writing the essay. As you’re crafting the narrative, it’ll feed back into your motif to create a comprehensive picture of whatever that motif is.

For example, say you want to write a narrative essay about how your first day in high school helped you establish your identity. You might discuss events like trying to figure out where to sit in the cafeteria, having to describe yourself in five words as an icebreaker in your math class, or being unsure what to do during your lunch break because it’s no longer acceptable to go outside and play during lunch. All of those ideas feed back into the central motif of establishing your identity.

The important thing to remember is that while a narrative essay is typically told chronologically and intended to read like a story, it is not purely for entertainment value. A narrative essay delivers its theme by deliberately weaving the motifs through the events, scenes, and details. While a narrative essay may be entertaining, its primary purpose is to tell a complete story based on a central meaning.

Unlike other essay forms, it is totally okay—even expected—to use first-person narration in narrative essays. If you’re writing a story about yourself, it’s natural to refer to yourself within the essay. It’s also okay to use other perspectives, such as third- or even second-person, but that should only be done if it better serves your motif. Generally speaking, your narrative essay should be in first-person perspective.

Though your motif choices may feel at times like you’re making a point the way you would in an argumentative essay, a narrative essay’s goal is to tell a story, not convince the reader of anything. Your reader should be able to tell what your motif is from reading, but you don’t have to change their mind about anything. If they don’t understand the point you are making, you should consider strengthening the delivery of the events and descriptions that support your motif.

Narrative essays also share some features with analytical essays, in which you derive meaning from a book, film, or other media. But narrative essays work differently—you’re not trying to draw meaning from an existing text, but rather using an event you’ve experienced to convey meaning. In an analytical essay, you examine narrative, whereas in a narrative essay you create narrative.

The structure of a narrative essay is also a bit different than other essays. You’ll generally be getting your point across chronologically as opposed to grouping together specific arguments in paragraphs or sections. To return to the example of an essay discussing your first day of high school and how it impacted the shaping of your identity, it would be weird to put the events out of order, even if not knowing what to do after lunch feels like a stronger idea than choosing where to sit. Instead of organizing to deliver your information based on maximum impact, you’ll be telling your story as it happened, using concrete details to reinforce your theme.

3 Great Narrative Essay Examples

One of the best ways to learn how to write a narrative essay is to look at a great narrative essay sample. Let’s take a look at some truly stellar narrative essay examples and dive into what exactly makes them work so well.

A Ticket to the Fair by David Foster Wallace

Today is Press Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, and I’m supposed to be at the fairgrounds by 9:00 A.M. to get my credentials. I imagine credentials to be a small white card in the band of a fedora. I’ve never been considered press before. My real interest in credentials is getting into rides and shows for free. I’m fresh in from the East Coast, for an East Coast magazine. Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish. I think they asked me to do this because I grew up here, just a couple hours’ drive from downstate Springfield. I never did go to the state fair, though—I pretty much topped out at the county fair level. Actually, I haven’t been back to Illinois for a long time, and I can’t say I’ve missed it.

Throughout this essay, David Foster Wallace recounts his experience as press at the Illinois State Fair. But it’s clear from this opening that he’s not just reporting on the events exactly as they happened—though that’s also true— but rather making a point about how the East Coast, where he lives and works, thinks about the Midwest.

In his opening paragraph, Wallace states that outright: “Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish.”

Not every motif needs to be stated this clearly , but in an essay as long as Wallace’s, particularly since the audience for such a piece may feel similarly and forget that such a large portion of the country exists, it’s important to make that point clear.

But Wallace doesn’t just rest on introducing his motif and telling the events exactly as they occurred from there. It’s clear that he selects events that remind us of that idea of East Coast cynicism , such as when he realizes that the Help Me Grow tent is standing on top of fake grass that is killing the real grass beneath, when he realizes the hypocrisy of craving a corn dog when faced with a real, suffering pig, when he’s upset for his friend even though he’s not the one being sexually harassed, and when he witnesses another East Coast person doing something he wouldn’t dare to do.

Wallace is literally telling the audience exactly what happened, complete with dates and timestamps for when each event occurred. But he’s also choosing those events with a purpose—he doesn’t focus on details that don’t serve his motif. That’s why he discusses the experiences of people, how the smells are unappealing to him, and how all the people he meets, in cowboy hats, overalls, or “black spandex that looks like cheesecake leotards,” feel almost alien to him.

All of these details feed back into the throughline of East Coast thinking that Wallace introduces in the first paragraph. He also refers back to it in the essay’s final paragraph, stating:

At last, an overarching theory blooms inside my head: megalopolitan East Coasters’ summer treats and breaks and literally ‘getaways,’ flights-from—from crowds, noise, heat, dirt, the stress of too many sensory choices….The East Coast existential treat is escape from confines and stimuli—quiet, rustic vistas that hold still, turn inward, turn away. Not so in the rural Midwest. Here you’re pretty much away all the time….Something in a Midwesterner sort of actuates , deep down, at a public event….The real spectacle that draws us here is us.

Throughout this journey, Wallace has tried to demonstrate how the East Coast thinks about the Midwest, ultimately concluding that they are captivated by the Midwest’s less stimuli-filled life, but that the real reason they are interested in events like the Illinois State Fair is that they are, in some ways, a means of looking at the East Coast in a new, estranging way.

The reason this works so well is that Wallace has carefully chosen his examples, outlined his motif and themes in the first paragraph, and eventually circled back to the original motif with a clearer understanding of his original point.

When outlining your own narrative essay, try to do the same. Start with a theme, build upon it with examples, and return to it in the end with an even deeper understanding of the original issue. You don’t need this much space to explore a theme, either—as we’ll see in the next example, a strong narrative essay can also be very short.

Death of a Moth by Virginia Woolf

After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.

In this essay, Virginia Woolf explains her encounter with a dying moth. On surface level, this essay is just a recounting of an afternoon in which she watched a moth die—it’s even established in the title. But there’s more to it than that. Though Woolf does not begin her essay with as clear a motif as Wallace, it’s not hard to pick out the evidence she uses to support her point, which is that the experience of this moth is also the human experience.

In the title, Woolf tells us this essay is about death. But in the first paragraph, she seems to mostly be discussing life—the moth is “content with life,” people are working in the fields, and birds are flying. However, she mentions that it is mid-September and that the fields were being plowed. It’s autumn and it’s time for the harvest; the time of year in which many things die.

In this short essay, she chronicles the experience of watching a moth seemingly embody life, then die. Though this essay is literally about a moth, it’s also about a whole lot more than that. After all, moths aren’t the only things that die—Woolf is also reflecting on her own mortality, as well as the mortality of everything around her.

At its core, the essay discusses the push and pull of life and death, not in a way that’s necessarily sad, but in a way that is accepting of both. Woolf begins by setting up the transitional fall season, often associated with things coming to an end, and raises the ideas of pleasure, vitality, and pity.

At one point, Woolf tries to help the dying moth, but reconsiders, as it would interfere with the natural order of the world. The moth’s death is part of the natural order of the world, just like fall, just like her own eventual death.

All these themes are set up in the beginning and explored throughout the essay’s narrative. Though Woolf doesn’t directly state her theme, she reinforces it by choosing a small, isolated event—watching a moth die—and illustrating her point through details.

With this essay, we can see that you don’t need a big, weird, exciting event to discuss an important meaning. Woolf is able to explore complicated ideas in a short essay by being deliberate about what details she includes, just as you can be in your own essays.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

On the twenty-ninth of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass.

Like Woolf, Baldwin does not lay out his themes in concrete terms—unlike Wallace, there’s no clear sentence that explains what he’ll be talking about. However, you can see the motifs quite clearly: death, fatherhood, struggle, and race.

Throughout the narrative essay, Baldwin discusses the circumstances of his father’s death, including his complicated relationship with his father. By introducing those motifs in the first paragraph, the reader understands that everything discussed in the essay will come back to those core ideas. When Baldwin talks about his experience with a white teacher taking an interest in him and his father’s resistance to that, he is also talking about race and his father’s death. When he talks about his father’s death, he is also talking about his views on race. When he talks about his encounters with segregation and racism, he is talking, in part, about his father.

Because his father was a hard, uncompromising man, Baldwin struggles to reconcile the knowledge that his father was right about many things with his desire to not let that hardness consume him, as well.

Baldwin doesn’t explicitly state any of this, but his writing so often touches on the same motifs that it becomes clear he wants us to think about all these ideas in conversation with one another.

At the end of the essay, Baldwin makes it more clear:

This fight begins, however, in the heart and it had now been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.

Here, Baldwin ties together the themes and motifs into one clear statement: that he must continue to fight and recognize injustice, especially racial injustice, just as his father did. But unlike his father, he must do it beginning with himself—he must not let himself be closed off to the world as his father was. And yet, he still wishes he had his father for guidance, even as he establishes that he hopes to be a different man than his father.

In this essay, Baldwin loads the front of the essay with his motifs, and, through his narrative, weaves them together into a theme. In the end, he comes to a conclusion that connects all of those things together and leaves the reader with a lasting impression of completion—though the elements may have been initially disparate, in the end everything makes sense.

You can replicate this tactic of introducing seemingly unattached ideas and weaving them together in your own essays. By introducing those motifs, developing them throughout, and bringing them together in the end, you can demonstrate to your reader how all of them are related. However, it’s especially important to be sure that your motifs and clear and consistent throughout your essay so that the conclusion feels earned and consistent—if not, readers may feel mislead.

5 Key Tips for Writing Narrative Essays

Narrative essays can be a lot of fun to write since they’re so heavily based on creativity. But that can also feel intimidating—sometimes it’s easier to have strict guidelines than to have to make it all up yourself. Here are a few tips to keep your narrative essay feeling strong and fresh.

Develop Strong Motifs

Motifs are the foundation of a narrative essay . What are you trying to say? How can you say that using specific symbols or events? Those are your motifs.

In the same way that an argumentative essay’s body should support its thesis, the body of your narrative essay should include motifs that support your theme.

Try to avoid cliches, as these will feel tired to your readers. Instead of roses to symbolize love, try succulents. Instead of the ocean representing some vast, unknowable truth, try the depths of your brother’s bedroom. Keep your language and motifs fresh and your essay will be even stronger!

Use First-Person Perspective

In many essays, you’re expected to remove yourself so that your points stand on their own. Not so in a narrative essay—in this case, you want to make use of your own perspective.

Sometimes a different perspective can make your point even stronger. If you want someone to identify with your point of view, it may be tempting to choose a second-person perspective. However, be sure you really understand the function of second-person; it’s very easy to put a reader off if the narration isn’t expertly deployed.

If you want a little bit of distance, third-person perspective may be okay. But be careful—too much distance and your reader may feel like the narrative lacks truth.

That’s why first-person perspective is the standard. It keeps you, the writer, close to the narrative, reminding the reader that it really happened. And because you really know what happened and how, you’re free to inject your own opinion into the story without it detracting from your point, as it would in a different type of essay.

Stick to the Truth

Your essay should be true. However, this is a creative essay, and it’s okay to embellish a little. Rarely in life do we experience anything with a clear, concrete meaning the way somebody in a book might. If you flub the details a little, it’s okay—just don’t make them up entirely.

Also, nobody expects you to perfectly recall details that may have happened years ago. You may have to reconstruct dialog from your memory and your imagination. That’s okay, again, as long as you aren’t making it up entirely and assigning made-up statements to somebody.

Dialog is a powerful tool. A good conversation can add flavor and interest to a story, as we saw demonstrated in David Foster Wallace’s essay. As previously mentioned, it’s okay to flub it a little, especially because you’re likely writing about an experience you had without knowing that you’d be writing about it later.

However, don’t rely too much on it. Your narrative essay shouldn’t be told through people explaining things to one another; the motif comes through in the details. Dialog can be one of those details, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

Use Sensory Descriptions

Because a narrative essay is a story, you can use sensory details to make your writing more interesting. If you’re describing a particular experience, you can go into detail about things like taste, smell, and hearing in a way that you probably wouldn’t do in any other essay style.

These details can tie into your overall motifs and further your point. Woolf describes in great detail what she sees while watching the moth, giving us the sense that we, too, are watching the moth. In Wallace’s essay, he discusses the sights, sounds, and smells of the Illinois State Fair to help emphasize his point about its strangeness. And in Baldwin’s essay, he describes shattered glass as a “wilderness,” and uses the feelings of his body to describe his mental state.

All these descriptions anchor us not only in the story, but in the motifs and themes as well. One of the tools of a writer is making the reader feel as you felt, and sensory details help you achieve that.

What’s Next?

Looking to brush up on your essay-writing capabilities before the ACT? This guide to ACT English will walk you through some of the best strategies and practice questions to get you prepared!

Part of practicing for the ACT is ensuring your word choice and diction are on point. Check out this guide to some of the most common errors on the ACT English section to be sure that you're not making these common mistakes!

A solid understanding of English principles will help you make an effective point in a narrative essay, and you can get that understanding through taking a rigorous assortment of high school English classes !

Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

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Narrative Essay about My Father

Although we are all guilty of neglect, procrastination, and solely lacking interest in an idea, often, this can come back to bite you. In my case, I let my dad down. He hadn't been a huge part of my life, and I didn’t want to let him in, but after life changing experiences, and finding myself, I in turn found my Dad.

My parents went through a nasty divorce when I was two years old. My mom has had full custody of me since, and I never got to know my Dad like most little girls did. Our relationship was contradicting, I was pulled in every which way by family members to not give him that bond I knew I had wanted. I had to become my own person, and he had to become a better man. We may have missed out on always having that “daddy, daughter” love, but the growth we have made is exponential. My dad was never meant to be a father. He was absent a lot when I was an infant, he didn't stick around, and he was always off doing something else for himself. I have always been sheltered from the harsh truth of where he was when I was a baby. To this day I still do not and will never know the pain he has inflicted on my mother and my family by being so absent in my sister and my lives starting from such a young age. This led to why I carried so much neglect towards him as I became a teenager and more in charge of the choices I made. I got to choose who I wanted to be and the people I wanted to surround myself with, and because my Dad had hurt my family to such a terrible extent I didn't want to reach out to him and make the effort to have a healthy relationship. Instead, I was just a freshly teenage girl, a mommys girl, enjoying her youth and being a kid, without a healthy relationship with my Dad. It was easier. Declining my calls from him when I was hanging out with my friends was easier. Leaving his texts on read and never giving him the time of day was easier. Living my life giving him the cold shoulder was just always easier.

In 2017, my bond with my cousin, Kasey, became stronger than I had ever imagined. We became inseparable best friends. Kasey is my dad's sister's daughter. Due to the person my Dad was portrayed to be growing up, I didn't have a close relationship with any family member on my dad's side of the family, but once Kasey and I came together, my world shifted. My time became consumed with being with Kasey, and being two kids growing up, living life. I was always somehow with her, whether it was holidays, week long river trips, countless Facetime calls, or just random sleepovers. Inevitably, this impacted my relationship with not only my dad, but my dad's side of the family. My aunt, Kelli,  became like a second mom to me, and uncles, aunts, and cousins I had never really talked to or connected with before besides a few hours during Christmas became so much more close to me. The Chapman blood in me had finally felt genuine. I was a Chapman, doing whatever it took for my family, and treating each day as a gift. My Dad and I began to connect more. Although I still was not living with him, he would call, I would answer, and we would talk for hours going over weekend river plans, what days I would be there, who would be going, if I had everything I needed packed, and it became him simply checking in on his daughter. Because I was going with my dad's side, I think he felt more obligated to make sure I was all set to go. Time and time again, he started to give me the weekly checkup calls, I would give him the details, and go about my trip. We made growth in communication, but we still lacked an emotional connection. My relationship with him stayed like this until October 2021when my father began to have tingling and chilly sensations in his left foot. Due to what we thought was an infection, his left big toenail was removed after repeated visits to the doctor. However, he was still not feeling better and the toe was not mending after several weeks. He underwent a CT scan, which revealed that he had a blockage right below his knee. After an unsuccessful angioplasty, he was warned he could have Buerger's disease or another type of artery disease and that nothing short of amputation would cure him. He had reached a drastic turning point in his life, nothing would be the same anymore, and from that day his life was completely transformed. Through this, I had become so much closer with my Dad. For the first time, I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to give him the support and courage he had needed. My dad became transparent. He let down his walls and shared such a vulnerable part of him with me. He could no longer give the vague “Hi, how are you? Have a good week” he had been giving. Maybe a tough and emotional curveball is just what we needed. Now, my Dad and I have prospered our relationship immensely. 

Neglects a funny thing. We don't realize we're doing it until the ones who stuck it out time and time again, are forced to let us go. I however got lucky, and my dad never stopped reaching out to me. I may have been slow to open up and break down my boundaries, but I faced my fears, stopped pushing him away and neglecting him and in turn my dad won me over through his vulnerability. Because of what my Dad had come through, I developed myself, I discovered the immense amount of pain I had felt for my Dad, and the desire and drive I had to hold his hand through it all. We both came together and grew, and we found ourselves and one another. Looking forward, my dad finally feels like my dad, and I'll forever be grateful for all that we have gone through and how we have bloomed.

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Narrative Essay: I Love My Parents

Parents are the closest people that we have in our lives, whether we realize it or not. They love us not because we are smart, beautiful, successful or we have a good sense of humour, but just because we are their children. I, too, love mom and dad simply because they are my parents, but I think I would have felt the same even if they weren’t. I love who they are as people, each with their own individual traits – and, together, forming an amazing super-team that’s made me who I am today and taught me what life is all about.

My mother is a cheerful, chatty perfectionist who seems to always find something to get excited about and who can talk for hours about animals and flowers. She is never afraid to speak her mind and she can be very convincing when she wants to. She sometimes get upset a bit too easily, but she is just as quick to forgive and forget. I love mom for all that she is – even when she’s angry – for all that she has done for me, and for all that she’s taught me. My mom has been through a lot throughout the years, but she always kept fighting.She taught me to never lose hope even in the direst of moments, and she showed me how to look for happiness in the small things. She’s been trying to teach me to be more organized as well, but hasn’t succeeded yet. I love her for that too.

My father is quiet, patient and calm, and he has an adorable hit-and-miss sense of humour. I may not always find his jokes that funny, but I love him for trying. Dad almost never gets angry and he is always polite, friendly and nice to everyone. He is not the one to verbalize emotions, but he always shows his feelings through sweet gestures and little surprizes. He is the pacifist in our family and never goes against mom’s wishes, but he runs a large company witha firm hand. I love my father for all these characteristics and for all he’s sacrificed to build a better life for us. He’s worked day and night to ensure we afford good education and have a rich, wonderful childhood, and he has passed up many great opportunities for the benefit of our family. I love dad because he’s taught me that you cannot have it all in life, but with hard work and dedication, you can have what matters most to you.

Mom and dad may be very different people, but they complement each other perfectly. Together, they formed a super-team that was always there – and, thankfully, still is – to provide comfort, nurturing, and support and help me grow as a person. Their complementary personalities bring balance in our family, and each of them steps in whenever they are needed the most. Together, they taught me to believe in myself and have turned me into a fighter. Their care and dedication towards me and each other has served as an example of what healthy relationships should be like, and I love and admire them for that.

I love my parents because they are my parents, my good friends, my heroes, my role models, my safe haven, my pillars of strength.I am who I am today thanks to them, and I know that their support and affection will play an essential role in what I will become in the future.All I can hope is that, when I have children of my own, I will be half as good a parent as they were to me.

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My Father Essay

Table of Contents

This essay will tell you about my father who is perfect for me.

There is an opinion that perfect dads do not exist, however, I strongly want to disagree with this opinion. Maybe not all the dads are perfect, but mine definitely is. My father is special and everything he does and says is special too. I like the way he dresses, he behaves, he moves and speaks. I am really proud of being his daughter, as I am a small present of a great person he is. Let me describe my father so that you understood how special he is.

When you look at him for the first time, you can think that he wears only classy and formal clothes. However, it is just first glance opinion. When you know my father for a long time you can notice that he feels comfortable in all types of clothes: formal, informal, sportive, cheap, expensive, loose, tight fitting. All these clothes are different, but I like them all as each piece accentuates his life style and his habits. What is more, all his clothes fit his body stature. My dad’s appearance is unique and he knows how to outline it the best way.

If we start talking about his appearance, it is important to mention that the way he moves and acts reflects his personality a lot. He prefers fast walking to the calm one.  I think that his manner to walk quickly shows his desire to catch the time and manage to take the most of his life.  He enjoys every part of his wonderful life. Even when he eats you can get jealous of him, as he will eat the simplest dish with such a delight as if it is the most expensive and delicious food in the world. He is happy and thankful for every piece of meal he gets, and he enjoys it.

He usually does not speak while eating, however, when he speaks it is one more story to tell. Communicating with my father, you will be able to notice any emotion and expression he has about the subject he is talking about. When he worries about some issues – he frowns, when he is happy – he smiles. It is easy to read his emotion on his face. It is even more interesting to talk with him when you can observe his face and analyze the feelings he has towards this or that topic.

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It is extremely interesting to listen to him. You can always find out some new information, learn something and share your experience with him. I can always rely on my father and I am confident that his opinion is objective. In case I want to get honest opinion of a person who doesn’t care, I would ask my father. His opinion always comes from the bottom of his heart. On the other hand, he knows how to choose the best time for it; he waits for the time when I am calm and relaxed so that I can easily perceive the information. Sometimes there may be a situation that everything goes wrong, and I feel bad. My father can always find right words and give good advice. These moments are important for me because I feel the support, I know that I am not alone, and it gives me confidence.

My father does not usually show off his feelings a lot. He might be strict and serious when we are out, but I know that he loves me, and I can feel his love in every movement and every sight. He is not used to kissing or cuddling me every day, however, when he does it once a week or so it is clear that these actions are extremely sincere and come from the big heart of my father. Every single time he gives me a cuddle, I feel overwhelmed with love and his attention. And these are the most precious moments of our relationships with my father.

This is my father the way I see him. This is the father I love so much!  And it is the only thing that matters! I have the clear understanding that there are no perfect people in the Earth; however, my father is perfect for me. He is my role model and he is the person I want to be similar to when I will grow up. I want to have a family and I want my children to be as found of me as I am of my father. I love my father very much and I do appreciate everything he does for my development and me. I think that my father and I have perfect relationships and I hope that with flow of time they will only improve.

LAist is part of Southern California Public Radio, a member-supported public media network.

How One Conversation With My Father Inspired ‘Inheriting’

• Learning history to connect 
• Learning history to heal 
• Learning history in solidarity 
• Listen to 'Inheriting'

My father’s side of the family spoke Mandarin, but my father did not. So, my sister and I never learned.

We spent a lifetime clumsily sounding out the 谢谢 and 再见 of our heritage language, while relatives smiled sympathetically. I always felt a little less Chinese American for it, always resented my dad a tiny bit for quashing what felt like a cornerstone of our identity.

But when anti-Asian hate crimes rose to an all time high in 2021, I chose to look more deeply at my family history – and realized how misguided my resentment was.

The process of interviewing my own relatives about our family history inspired “ Inheriting ,” co-created with Anjuli Sastry Krbechek and an entire team at LAist Studios. Set in California, this multi-part, narrative podcast about Asian American and Pacific Islander families explores how one event rippled through the generations that followed.

On “Inheriting,” the past is personal. Families are acknowledged and celebrated as actors in history. Our team wanted to know: What would happen if we talked about the past beyond facts and figures? What if history became a means for bridging intergenerational gaps, tending to our mental health, and processing the world we live in today?

Ultimately, we want “Inheriting” to inspire others to interview their own family members (however you define family), and to use our show and  digital resource guide as a model for navigating conversations about the past.

Learning history to connect

The past became personal to me when I stumbled upon a single date, 1943. That was the year the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, just as my grandmother, Hui Chen, was preparing to immigrate to the U.S. When I stitched these two timelines together – my family history and sociopolitical history – my perspective of my own family shifted.

I imagined the long shadow of that xenophobic law across my grandmother’s 17-year-old face, a Chinese college student fleeing war with Japan and determined to survive in New York City. I got curious about how languages and traditions die within families, and how historical and collective trauma shapes a family for generations.

My first real attempt to answer those questions was in 2021, when I interviewed her son – my father, Christopher Kwong – for almost two hours for the NPR series " Where We Come From ." He told me a story I had never heard before: about speaking Mandarin as a kid, his kindergarten teacher’s belief that bilingualism would hold him back academically ( a now unproven idea ), and his parents’ overnight decision to become an English-only household.

I pictured my five-year-old father in khaki shorts on summer vacation, doing vocabulary drills with my grandmother. He softly told me it was “a decision for (his) own emotional and social survival.” The more I learned about my father’s determination to adopt English, the more my resentment dissipated.

In that two-hour interview, I opened up to him too. I shared how disconnected I’d felt from our culture, our extended family, and why I decided to learn basic Mandarin as an adult. After we wrapped, the distance between us felt shorter. I asked him, “How does it feel to talk about all of this?”

“It’s very therapeutic,” he said. “For people who need to unburden themselves, I think it’s very necessary.”

Learning history to heal

After that conversation with my father, I interviewed my Auntie Linda and Uncle Dick with my microphone and tucked those audio files somewhere safe. I began snapping pictures of sepia-toned family photographs and memorizing the names of those long gone.

Through these conversations, I’ve come to understand how war, racism, and assimilation have shaped our family, and how it runs down the family tree like an inkblot all the way to me.

I was a very depressed and anxious teenager. High-achieving, but unable to get out of bed for stretches of time. No one in my suburban Connecticut hometown had a family history like ours. Therapy and medication have been life-saving, but the real healing has come from talking to other Asian Americans. Other people’s stories have kept me alive. Stories were the proof I needed that life is flexible, and survivable.

A 2019 study from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA) found that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were the least likely of any racial or ethnic group to seek out mental health services. The barriers for affordable, culturally-competent care are numerous, but there is a generational change afoot.

The list of therapist directories , in-language conversation starters , and recognition of non-Western care practices is growing. Podcasts and new books devoted to intergenerational trauma are flourishing. Our show wants to be a part of that change.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones as you process this history. Our team’s favorite care resources include the Asian Mental Health Project , Pacific Asian Counseling Services , AAPI Equity Alliance , and Yellow Chair Collective .

Throughout production, our entire team learned so much from Sherry C. Wang , our consulting psychologist on the show, about the intersections between family history, community dialogue, and mental health. “Just talking about it is a big deal,” she’d constantly reassure me. On “Inheriting,” we explore intergenerational trauma most deeply in Episode 5 of the show, with Leah Bash. Both sides of her Japanese American family were incarcerated during World War II.

I want this show to find those that need it, perhaps a teenager in an all-white suburb like I once was, feeling lonely and disconnected from other people. And I want listeners to experience what it's like to bridge that gap, through intentional conversation, deep listening, and moments of real learning and sharing.

Learning history in solidarity

Seven families participated in the first season of “Inheriting,” from Cambodia, Guam, Japan, India, Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. All of them processed a life-changing historical moment, across hours of conversation.

Interested in interviewing your own relatives? Our team highly recommends the oral history resources from Self Evident and StoryCorps . Also check out the "Inheriting" digital resource guide .

As the reporter facilitating those conversations, I was astonished how little I knew about other communities. In so many ways, this show is the history class I wish I took in college. By deconstructing the AAPI monolith, our team sought to tell a fuller story of these communities.

While making this show, I clung to Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America and Renee Tajima-Peña’s 5-part PBS series Asian Americans . Social media has busted down doors in making learning more accessible. A growing list of states are requiring AAPI studies in their K-12 curriculum.

And yet, a growing number of states have restricted or banned teaching critical race theory . Last year, Florida banned an AP African American studies course , while approving an AAPI history bill for K-12 schools. This move prevents the next generation from understanding how different communities have historically affected one another.

“Inheriting” approaches history education differently, holding our stories alongside other immigrant and BIPOC groups. The first two episodes of the show focus on the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising for that reason, examining how decades of segregation, disinvestment, and police brutality led up to that one week in April. It ends with a call by professor Carol Kwang Park to her students: “What are you going to do to stop it?”

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing group of eligible voters and the fastest growing racial and ethnic group in the United States. When I think about that fact, Carol’s question rings in my ears. What are we going to do with our expanding political power?

This is a show meant to spark conversation within families– a starting point for those who want to engage deeply with the past. That’s why we built a digital resource guide to accompany each episode, alongside lesson plans from the The Asian American Education Project for K-12 instructors and students.

Listen to 'Inheriting'

My father has been one of the biggest supporters of me making “Inheriting.” Every plot beat, every historical deep dive. But he’s nervous.

Over the phone, he said, “I gotta be honest with you Emily, I’m not sure if anyone will want to listen to this.”

I get his concern. The people in “Inheriting” are neither celebrities, nor power brokers. But they are all actors in history, and that is compelling in every sense.

All across the Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora are people who took heroic leaps to keep their families together – whose choices made a difference – fleeing war, occupation, and social upheaval. Our families have shaped social movements, as activists and artists, and done good where they could: in gas stations and courtrooms, behind barbed wire and bullhorns, on the farm and on the picket line.

That inheritance is ours for the taking, if we’re willing to go back and reclaim it.

New episodes of “Inheriting” come out every Thursday. Listeners can subscribe   on the NPR app , Apple Podcasts , Spotify and wherever podcasts are available.

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Father — How My Father’s Stroke Changed My Life

How My Father’s Stroke Changed My Life

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Published: Jan 28, 2021

Words: 900 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

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Tina Turner and My Father

Back when Tina Turner was Anna Mae Bullock and attending Sumner High School in St. Louis, Missouri, she would regularly cross the Mississippi River to hear live music at nightclubs in East St. Louis, Illinois. Crossing the river meant crossing state lines and states of mind; it meant crossing toward the beginnings of her life as Tina Turner. It was at the Manhattan Club in East St. Louis where she first heard Ike Turner play with his band, Kings of Rhythm. During an intermission one night in 1957, so the story goes, Anna Mae grabbed the mic and sang B. B. King’s ballad “You Know I Love You,” impressing Ike enough to eventually secure her place as a vocalist for the band. She spent the next year finishing high school and crossing the river every weekend to sing with the band at their regular gigs. By 1960, she had moved across the river to live with Ike in East St. Louis and to begin in earnest her training as a singer. That year, the band’s demo of “A Fool in Love” featuring Anna Mae singing lead caught the attention of Juggy Murray, president of Sue Records, who bought the rights for the song and insisted that the band make Anna Mae its star. In response, Ike renamed Anna Mae as Tina Turner and trademarked the name, ensuring that should she ever leave him or the band, he could replace her with another Tina Turner. When Tina expressed reservations about the terms of their relationship, Ike responded by striking her in the head with a wooden shoe stretcher. She had made a crossing from which it would be nearly impossible to cross back.

The first time my father crossed the river was in the same year that Anna Mae grabbed the mic and sang the blues. It was January 1957, and he was just seven years old. He joined his mother and four of his siblings, traveling north from Mexico across the Rio Grande to settle in San Antonio, where his dad had come the year before to find work. My father grew up west of another river—the San Antonio—which he would regularly cross in 1970 as he headed east each day across town toward the army base to report for duty or dental-assistant training classes. By the time he’d crossed the Pacific and the South China Sea in 1971, the banks of the Perfume River just north of Phu Bai, Vietnam, were soaked with the blood of the many lost in the infamous Battle of Huế. His first night in Phu Bai, just thirty miles south of the DMZ, he slept through the rocket shelling and the shouting of his bunkmates hustling their asses to the nearby bunker. He never lost a minute of sleep worrying about the way things might have been. He never was the type to dwell on the losses that accompanied all the crossings he was forced to make.

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How I Met My Father

“What took you so long?” he said.

By Minrose Gwin

Fathers don’t fare well in my fiction. They are white supremacist killers and domestic abusers. They trick their wives into becoming pregnant. They have affairs. They abandon their families.

My biological father, Albert Coleman Bryan Jr., was 22 when I was born. He was a dashing air force pilot who flew off into the wide blue yonder, leaving my mother and me grounded.

He had red curly hair and freckles and a charming grin. It’s a face I don’t remember, if indeed I ever saw it. My parents split up around the time I was born.

I grew up tasting the bitterness of my father’s absence, especially at Christmas, when he sent me expensive presents. My mother would hand them to me without a word, and I would know to go into my closet to open them.

By then, she had remarried. In addition to a stepdad, I had a brother and sister. Our stockings were filled with bananas and oranges, little else.

In my closet, I would open the presents from my father, with cards signed by his secretary or someone in a store. Among the many gifts over the years, he sent me a pearl necklace, a portable typewriter and a birthstone ring. I’d know to tuck them away in my closet and never to mention them to my brother and sister.

Decades later, on an afternoon in May, I pull into a strip mall in Chapel Hill, N.C. I’m taking a break from grading end-of-semester papers. Before I get out of the car, I check my email to find a note from a woman named Jann, who informs me that she is my adopted half sister.

“What about my father?” I ask. “Is he still alive?”

Yes, Jann writes, my father is still alive. He is living at the Floyd E. “Tut” Fann State Veterans Home in Huntsville, Ala. He is 91 years old. Would I like to see him?

Jann discovered my existence when she was clearing out our father’s house, before he went into the home. She reached into a pants pocket and found an old wallet. Tucked inside was a tattered photo of me, a snaggletoothed first-grader at Church Street Elementary School in Tupelo, Miss. On the back was an inscription: Dear Daddy, Love, Minrose.

I had never thought of myself as a dirty little secret. My parents were married in the First Presbyterian Church. My mother wore the white dress with the long train. There was music and a dry reception in the church basement, my grandfather being a teetotaler. I was born two years later.

As soon as grades are posted, I book a flight to Alabama and throw some clothes in a suitcase. In Birmingham, I rent a car, spend the night in a ratty motel, and head for Huntsville the next morning. By the time I arrive at Jann’s condo, my head is pounding. I take a double dose of my blood pressure medication.

The humidity makes my shirt stick to my back as Jann ushers me into the nursing home. She tells me I’ll need to speak loudly; our father is almost deaf.

I anticipate a private meeting in his room, poignant, with perhaps a touch of awkwardness. What I get instead is a crowded lunchroom: the clanging of trays, voices garbled by age and infirmity, very, very old men, the stench of urine mixed with the odor of overcooked meat. Jann leads me through the hubbub, homing in on a crumpled, hairless version of myself in a wheelchair.

“Daddy!” she belts out. “Here’s your daughter come to see you. This is Minrose, your daughter!”

Jann then addresses the room at large: the old men, all white; the young attendants, all Black. “She’s his daughter, and it’s the first time they’ve ever met!” She is bursting with enthusiasm.

Heads swivel. Forks pause in midair. Attendants smile.

My father turns to me, as slow as an ancient tortoise.

“What took you so long?” he says.

Jann and the attendants laugh. I do not.

It takes me a moment to absorb the fact that these are the first words my father has ever uttered to me, his 69-year-old daughter. I thought I had left my bitterness behind but now I taste it on my tongue.

“Why did you leave?” I find myself shouting.

The silence in the room thickens. Someone calls out, “Not very nice.”

I see two dozen sets of eyes glaring at me. My own little personal drama, I realize, has become a soap opera, and I’m the villain.

My father offers a toothless grin. “Just stupid, I guess,” he says with a laugh. And I find myself laughing, too.

Later, I will discover that my father had delivered babies in Huntsville. Women loved him. In his heyday, he was a jokester, a pilot, a dancer, a chef — the life of the party.

During his second marriage, he impregnated two single women, first his anesthesiology nurse, then his receptionist, both of whom gave up their baby boys for adoption, meaning I have two half brothers I’ve never met.

In the nursing home, I tell my father he has a granddaughter in Dallas. He asks about my mother. I tell him she died two decades ago of ovarian cancer. I also tell him she became mentally ill, that I had to commit her to psychiatric hospitals — a nice private one, then a grim state institution — against her will.

What I don’t tell him: I knew, early on, that something had happened to my mother. Something had gone click, turned off. Old photographs show me, a curly-haired, round-faced child clutching a stuffed rabbit twice my size as my mother gazes off into the distance.

He shakes his head. Then he mutters something.

“Speak up, Daddy,” Jann commands.

He examines my face. I bend down to hear what he’s about to say.

He whispers, “Why didn’t you come before?”

He died two weeks later. Jann wrote me that the Episcopal Church was filled. I was not mentioned in the obituary.

Minrose Gwin is the author of the novels “The Accidentals,” “Promise” and “The Queen of Palmyra.” Her next novel, “Beautiful Dreamers,” comes out this summer.

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My book is not my baby — but the two do have a lot in common

For me, publishing a book isn't the same as giving birth. it's more like sending my child to preschool, by noa silver.

I remember in my first year of motherhood the way I felt my world grow smaller and more intimate , the pace of my life grow slower and more focused. When my husband would come home from coaching and consulting meetings, networking events, and the workshops he facilitated, he would find me ensconced in the tiny world of our home, wrapped up in the milky sweetness of the baby. The private, domestic realm became my primary realm during those early months of motherhood, when I would walk around and around our small apartment with my baby wrapped to my chest, murmuring “shh, shh,” over and over again, like a mantra, or a prayer. Her heart beating against my heart, recreating womb-like conditions on the outside.

In the same sun-drenched week in August, that baby, my elder daughter, started preschool and I signed a publishing contract for my debut novel, "California Dreaming ." Two years after that, my younger daughter has started at that same preschool, and "California Dreaming" is mere days from being released.

Like those early months of motherhood, writing is an intensely private, solitary act. For me, to write necessitates going inward, it requires shutting out the outside world and external stimuli for the sake of being able to listen fully. My writing process takes inspiration from Anne Lamott’s practice of the one-inch picture frame. All through my daughters’ early years, I would carve out pockets of time — while they napped, or after bedtime, or when they were at the playground — to write. My pace of writing my novel was complementary to the pace of motherhood, the pace of attending to a baby and then a toddler. Each day I wrote just 250 words, filling my one-inch frame.

I am not the first to notice the connection between writing and parenting , but while many have compared publishing a book to giving birth, for me there is an even more apt comparison. Both child and book lived in and then with me for many years after their births. For me, publishing a book feels most parallel to sending my child to preschool for the first time, for it is in both these acts that that which once lived solely inside the private, domestic realm, and within only a few primary relationships, now enters the public sphere.

The distinction between the public and private realms, the separation between domestic and political spheres, has long been deeply intertwined with the preservation of a capitalistic society. Mothering so often happens outside of the public sphere, outside of the public gaze, and much has been written about the hidden, unpaid labor of caretaking. In our society, there is a hiddenness inherent in the domestic realm and a hiddenness to the lives and experiences of women.

Like those early months of motherhood, writing is an intensely private, solitary act.

Perhaps the novel form itself could be considered a kind of public square, a forum in which human relationships, motivations, self-discovery, and journeying gets played out again and again through different lenses, and under different gazes. Historically, even in the context of the novel, significant female life experiences — childbirth and abortion, breastfeeding and postpartum depression —  have not been explored nearly as deeply as those life experiences of typical male self-development.

In my writing, I am drawn to exploring the inner lives of women, especially during moments of significant life transitions. In "California Dreaming," the main character is Elena, who, over the course of the novel, grows from a young, idealistic early 20-something, into a 30-year-old woman who reckons with the decisions she has made, the values she holds and the stories she has inherited. It is a bildungsroman, a story form that traces the general and spiritual coming-of-age process, and it is told in the first-person point of view, granting Elena herself the narrative voice to describe her journey. There is an intimacy in using the first-person, a way of drawing near to the narrator that allows for greater play and insight into the narrator’s own development, her way of viewing the world, her inner life.

In an interview with Terry Gross in 1985, the writer Grace Paley reflected, “When you write, you illuminate what’s hidden, and that’s a political act.” For many years, my primary world has been the private, domestic, intimate world of mothering little children and writing and rewriting and editing a novel. A hidden world. And now, gradually, there are bridges between the private and public realms, and that which has been hidden is becoming illuminated, revealed.

In the months after giving birth, I felt the deep truth of the fact that I was not fully separate from my children. And yet, as they have grown, we have each gone through periods of differentiation, of reasserting the boundaries of self. My children no longer exist primarily in a carrier or in my arms; they are no longer solely dyadic extensions of me. They go to school, they have thoughts and experiences and dreams and feelings and wishes that I am not witness to, and that they navigate with peers and teachers and the many other people who populate their life. They have relationships that are their own.

So, too, with my novel. For many years I worked in private tandem with the novel, with my own creative process. In the months since I signed my book deal, however, I have begun to experience the way my creative process—a process of unfolding, refining, listening, and responding—is being transmuted into an object, into something that will go out into the world, into the public sphere, and there take on a life of its own. We are differentiating, my book and I, and soon it will be in relationship with others, with readers who will encounter it as themselves, and form judgments, connections, and opinions about it that are distinct from my own.

Motherhood’s value has often been located in the fact that the children we are mothering will eventually become citizens of the larger society. Similarly, a book on its publishing journey—as I have newfound understanding and appreciation for—ultimately becomes a commodity. The publishing industry measures a book’s success in sales, and even my chance at publishing another book in the future may rest on the sales numbers of my first. In these months of preparing for my book’s launch, of asking bookstores and libraries to stock my book, and friends and family to pre-order, I have been struck by my own doubts of its inherent worth. To ask people to buy it , to spend money on it, has necessarily sent me diving into questions of its value : Will this book change your life? Must it be read? Will you like it? I don’t know.

For many years, my primary world has been the private, domestic, intimate world of mothering little children and writing and rewriting and editing a novel. A hidden world.

Here’s what I do know: it had to be written. It called to me again and again during the writing process itself, that private, intimate birthing and caring for of this idea, these characters, this story, this particular viewpoint on the whole messy endeavor that we call life, and I couldn’t not write it.

In many ways, this is the same way I feel toward mothering my children. I don’t know who they will become, or what they will or will not contribute to society. I mother them in this moment, now, because they are here, in front of me, whole and perfect and messy and complete human beings just as they are. I attend to them because I must, because I am called to with my whole self.

It can seem at times that worth and value exist exclusively in the public sphere, in the shared collective, in the process of being witnessed and incorporated into the greater whole. But when this greater whole is one whose meaning rests in capital, then worth and value become markers for how much something contributes to capital: the book that sells well, or the child who grows up to be a “productive” member of society—a worker, a voter, a consumer.

It is not that I am against a shared, collective space, not that I wish for more individualized and individualistic paths toward meaning — far from it. However, in the context of a public sphere that primarily operates in terms of product, output and money, the private realm can sometimes seem a place of refuge, a place where creative process and attentive mothering can actually coexist in harmony, for the sake of attention itself, for the sake of love—and not future production or consumption.

Yet, I wonder whether that coexistence can only occur out of the public gaze, in a hidden domain, or if it would be possible for it to thrive in the public sphere. What kind of relationships could we have, the witnessers and the witnessed, in which we could write and mother from a place of intimate curiosity, where we could do so in a way that feels held by others, by community, where it is neither solely a solitary, lonely endeavor, nor one whose worth is measured in a balance sheet?

Perhaps it is only in a novel where we can fully explore that possibility.

personal stories from writers

• What if I can't "savor every single moment" of their childhood?
• The "groupie," the ghostwriter and me
• My disapproving doctor father hated my work — but we had more in common than I thought

Noa Silver was born in Jerusalem and raised between Scotland and Maine. Her debut novel " California Dreaming " is due out in May.

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S.D. Arts & Culture Newsletter: Natalie Merchant to deliver more ‘Merch moments’ at Humphrey’s

This week, four shows to catch at the San Diego International Fringe Festival, a remount of the musical ‘Pásale Pásale’ and more

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I call them my “Merch Moments,” musical memories of Natalie Merchant (that’s a lot of alliteration) that I’ve acquired over the years.

The first would be back in her 10,000 Maniacs days and the release of the band’s album “Blind Man’s Zoo” in 1989. Amid all the predominant darkness on the record was the song “Trouble Me,” which Merchant wrote for her then-hospitalized father. It was here that I realized Merchant possessed a distinctive vocal style worth paying attention to.

Next came 1993 when Merchant and REM’s Michael Stipe headlined the Inaugural Ball for the newly installed President Bill Clinton. That’s when Merchant’s “These Are Days” would become my favorite of her songs. Still is.

Of course, there’s the first time I saw Merchant live in concert — in 1999 at Copley Symphony Hall. A wonderful show with one overly cutesy glitch: “spontaneously” bringing a concertgoer’s child up onto the stage to sing with her. Had to be a plant.

One more Merch Moment: the Cowboy Junkies’ album and accompanying film “Trinity Revisited” captured inside the Church of the Trinity in Toronto. Merchant, at her brooding best and performing with a band that broods like few others can, joins Margo Timmins and company on “Misguided Angel” and “To Love Is To Bury.”

Merchant, now in her 40th year in the music business, is at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island Saturday and Sunday nights . I didn’t score a ticket before the show sold out, but that’s all right. I’ve got my trove of Merchant Moments.

Fringe festival

Join the club if you’ve never heard of Connie Converse . Google her, though, and you’ll discover that this woman born Elizabeth Eaton Converse in New Hampshire in 1924 is widely credited by scholars and performers of folk music as being the first modern singer-songwriter. Better yet, hear her music in person.

Actor/musician Hope Levy says she only discovered Converse two years ago, but since last May she’s been telling Connie’s story in music and song. Her solo cabaret show “The Connie Converse Universe” is a definite highlight of the ongoing San Diego International Fringe Festival .

It begins with a question: Why did this gifted though enigmatic woman climb into her VW bug at the age of 50 and drive away, never to be heard from again?

Levy performs 16 songs in 50 minutes at the New Destiny Church in Lincoln Park. Shows upcoming: Friday at 6 p.m. and Saturday at 1 p.m. Tickets must be purchased online at sdfringe.org .

More Fringe

The most polished piece I saw last weekend at the Fringe (which ends on Sunday) was Riot Productions’ “Audition Sides,” a world-premiere tale about two married ex-lovers who find themselves auditioning together for a show. The insider actors stuff (cold readings, warmup exercises, etc.) is the most fun, though there are many searing relationship moments to savor as well.

You can catch “Audition Sides” at 9 p.m. Saturday at Wildsong Theatre and Arts Collective (formerly OB Playhouse) in Ocean Beach. For tickets and details, visit sdfringe.org .

Still more Fringe

If you’re into swordplay and silliness, you’ll want to see Nicolas A. Castillo’s “Pirates of Hamlet,” a costumed comedy that also features puppets and a two-headed judge. Even Shakespeare might chuckle at this one. “Pirates” happens at No Limits Church in Lincoln Park at 9 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday.

One more recommendation: comedian Mark Vigeant’s “The Best Man Show,” which should put the zaniest wedding reception memory you’ve got to shame by comparison. It’s the gift of a drunken toast that keeps on giving. The show reprises at 10:30 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday in the Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theatre in Balboa Park. Don’t bring the kiddies.

For a complete rundown on the Fringe Festival go to sdfringe.org .

I first saw TuYo Theatre’s interactive musical “Pásale Pásale” outdoors on the UC San Diego campus at last month’s La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls (WOW) Festival and it turned my head around completely about swap meets. They really are slices of life.

Now the immersive, Latinx-centric “Pásale Pásale” is being staged indoors, at Bayfront Charter High School in Chula Vista. Performances begin on Wednesday and will continue through June 30.

For more about “Pásale Pásale,” read Union-Tribune Arts Editor Pam Kragen’s March story on its director, Maria Patrice Amon: Theater artist Maria Patrice Amon aims to expand the Latinx narrative .

U-T arts stories you may have missed this past week

• James Hubbell, iconic sculptor, artist and naturalist, dies at 92
• La Jolla Playhouse musical to tell the unvarnished story of country legends Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
• Belly Up to celebrate its 50th anniversary with 50 concerts this summer

‘Fat Ham’ to take a funny, contemporary and unconventional look at Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’

• Pianist and bestselling author Jeremy Denk eager for San Diego concert return
• The Dish: ‘Only Murders in the Building’ cookie shop and 3 other new eateries headed to San Diego
• Review: Onstage Playhouse’s surrealistic ‘Devil in a Box’ explores the roots of addiction
• Review: San Diego Musical Theatre’s high-energy ‘Legally Blonde’ bubbles with fun
• Review: Opera À La Carte San Diego makes an impressive debut with well-sung ‘La bohème’

University of California Television invites you to enjoy this special selection of programs from throughout the University of California. Descriptions courtesy of and text written by UCTV staff:

“’My Reality is Different’ with Nalini Malani”

Nalini Malani, the 2023 Kyoto Prize Laureate in arts and philosophy, stands as a trailblazer among India’s video artists. In this program, Malani talks about her extensive use of diverse mediums, including theater videos and mixed media installations. Her technique incorporates stop-motion, erasure animations, reverse paintings, and digital animations. Profoundly influenced by her family’s migration during the partition of India, Malani’s artwork also confronts significant feminist themes. Her latest installation, “My Reality is Different,” employs the myth of Cassandra — a prophetess whose truths were disregarded — to symbolize the often-overlooked insights of the female psyche. Through this metaphor, Malani advocates for a societal shift towards more humane civilizational values.

“An Anti-Semitic Double Murder: The Forgotten History of Right-Wing Terrorism in Postwar West Germany”

On Dec. 19, 1980, Shlomo Lewin, former chairman of the Jewish community in Nuremberg, and his partner Frida Poeschke were tragically murdered in their Erlangen home. Initially, investigators focused on Lewin’s social circle rather than pursuing connections to the right-wing extremist group Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann. As part of UCSD’s Holocaust Living History Workshop, German historian Uffa Jensen meticulously reconstructs this crime and explores its underlying motives. His research reveals a disturbing history of violence, trivialization, and repression that persists today. Jensen, an expert in modern history, also holds the position of deputy director at the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at the Technische Universität in Berlin.

“Ixiles: Voices from the Shadow of Time’”

Filmmaker Alejandro M. Flores Aguilar and moderator Giovanni Batz explore the film “Ixiles: Voices from the Shadows of Time,” which highlights the historical resilience of Guatemala’s Indigenous Ixil community. Aguilar discusses the project’s inception, influenced by the Ixil’s enduring struggle against oppression, particularly during Guatemala’s civil war. The conversation addresses the complexities of ethnographic research, emphasizing the ethical responsibilities of documenting vulnerable groups. Additionally, they consider the future of anti-colonial resistance and the role of academia and media in advocating for Indigenous rights. This discussion not only illuminates the film’s context but also broader issues of cultural preservation and resistance.

And finally, top weekend events

The best things to do this weekend in San Diego: May 24-26

Coddon is a freelance writer.

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