Andrew Solomon believes it is our differences that unite us.
A celebrated author and lecturer, Solomon will give a talk based on his groundbreaking book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 28, in the Brown Ballroom of the Bone Student Center. The event, which is part of the Speaker Series at Illinois State University, is free and open to the public.
Published in 2012, Far From the Tree won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was chosen as one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2012. The work is a breathtaking look at parents and children who face extraordinary circumstances including deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism and schizophrenia, to those facing stigmas for being transgender, prodigies or conceived in rape. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, Solomon argues, the “experience of difference” within families is universal.
