A transformative story about life, love, plants, and a woman's discovery of a long-held family secret.
In the last year of her father's life, while tending to his needs as well as to those of her ailing mother, Kyo Maclear set out to write an 'operating manual' of sorts, on love, for her sons. She was concerned with the way the western world over-accentuates the love associated with romance and the nuclear family while other types of relationship, like elder-care and a connection to the nonhuman world, are under-emphasized. Kyo wanted her sons to have more expansive narrative maps for adulthood.
Three months after her father died, Kyo received the results of a genetic test: the father she was grieving was not biologically hers. In an instant, the alternative view of love she intended for her sons met a more significant question: what is kinship?
On one level, “Unearthing” is a propulsive story of one woman's search for the truth of her conception and the identity of her birth father, in the shadows of missed opportunities and her mother's failing memories. On another, it is a fresh and generous consideration of our deepest human intimacies and connections. How are our relationships influenced by race, gender, generational care and dependence? What are the limits and possibilities of storytelling in making sense of a life? Can the humble act of tending a garden provide common ground for an inquisitive daughter and her complicated mother? At its heart, “Unearthing” is alchemical: bursting with the very love it seeks to understand.
