In this "refreshingly relatable" (Outside) memoir, perfect for the self-isolating family, Slate editor Dan Kois sets out with his family on a journey around the world to change their lives together.
What happens when one frustrated dad turns his kids' lives upside down in search of a new way to be a family?
Dan Kois and his wife always did their best for their kids. Busy professionals living in the D.C. suburbs, they scheduled their children's time wisely, and when they weren't arguing over screen time, the Kois family-Dan, his wife Alia, and their two pre-teen daughters-could each be found searching for their own happiness. But aren't families supposed to achieve happiness together?
In this eye-opening, heartwarming, and very funny family memoir, the fractious, loving Kois' go in search of other places on the map that might offer them the chance to live away from home-but closer together. Over a year the family lands in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and small-town Kansas. The goal? To get out of their rut of busyness and distractedness and to see how other families live outside the East Coast parenting bubble.
HOW TO BE A FAMILY brings readers along as the Kois girls-witty, solitary, extremely online Lyra and goofy, sensitive, social butterfly Harper-like through the Kiwi bush, ride bikes to a Dutch school in the pouring rain, battle iguanas in their Costa Rican kitchen, and learn to love a town where everyone knows your name. Meanwhile, Dan interviews neighbors, public officials, and scholars to learn why each of these places work the way they do. Will this trip change the Kois family's lives? Or do families take their problems and conflicts with them wherever we go?
A journalistic memoir filled with heart, empathy, and lots of whining, HOW TO BE A FAMILY will make readers dream about the amazing adventures their own families might take.
ISBN-13: 9780316552622
Media Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Little - Brown and Company
Publication Date: 09-17-2019
Pages: 336
Product Dimensions: 6.70(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.30(d)
Dan Kois is an editor at Slate, founding host of the podcast Mom and Dad Are Fighting, and a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine.
What People are Saying About This
Author of Far and Away and Far From the Tree - Andrew Solomon
“In this highly entertaining and wryly insightful book, Dan Kois shows how elastic the very concept of family is. As he recounts his family’s encounters with four foreign cultures, he illuminates not only those other societies, but also our own. He argues persuasively that we have much to learn from divorcing ourselves from our own assumptions.”
Table of Contents
You're Screwing Up 3
New Zealand: January-April
Steves 31
Chapter 1 Number 8 Wire 39
Chapter 2 Te Aroha 57
Chapter 3 On Any Walk 72
The Goodbye Party 99
The Netherlands: April-July
Phantom Ducks 107
Chapter 4 A Revolting Attitude 117
Chapter 5 Fietsen 137
Chapter 6 The Poldermodel 151
The Dance Recital 173
Costa Rica: July-September
Tides 181
Chapter 7 Every Day 186
Kansas: October-December
Bricks 241
Chapter 8 A Quiet America 247
Chapter 9 Bloom Where You're Planted 265
Chapter 10 A Holy Hug 286
The Posada 305
Love and Attention 313
Show More
