Shapiro Interview

DNA analysis can be a boon for those seeking information about their ancestors but it is a double-edged sword, sometimes overturning the world as we know it.

Such was the shocking situation author Dani Shapiro found herself in when she casually decided to take a DNA test. The results arrived like a bolt out of the blue: her beloved father was not her biological parent.

Her resulting book, Inheritance, grew out of her attempt to resolve the sense of betrayal she felt toward her parents, by then both dead; her loss of identity and her musings on the ethics of sperm-donor conceptions. “I’ve always tried to make meaning out of things that are difficult,” Shapiro has been quoted as saying, “to attempt to order the chaos.”

Weaving anecdotes about her upbringing as an Orthodox Jewish girl in New York City with technological details about genetics and the beginning of the “fertility movement,” she invites readers to contemplate age-old themes such as nature versus nurture, individual versus family identity and the way ethnic and religious traditions affect one’s sense of belonging in the world.

This Sunday at 4 PM Shapiro will be interviewed by author Roxana Robinson on Zoom in a program sponsored by the Cornwall Library. Registration is required by going to the link below.

Shapiro is a bestselling author of five memoirs and five novels. Her essays, short fiction and journalism have been featured in Elle Magazine, Granta, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Vogue and other publications. Robinson is an author, professor, environmentalist and scholar of American paintings. She has written six novels, three collections of short stories and the biography of Georgia O’Keeffe.