Do You Remember Me?: A Father, a Daughter, and a Search for the Self

By Judith Levine

Book Overview

In her award-winning book Harmful to Minors, Judith Levine radically upended our fixed ideas about childhood. Now, she tackles the other end of life in this poignant memoir of a daughter coming to terms with a difficult father who is sinking into dementia, presenting an insightful exploration of the ways we think about disability, aging, and the self as it resides in the body and the world.

In prose that is unsentimental yet moving, serious yet darkly funny, complex in emotion and ideas yet spare in diction, Levine reassembles her father's personal and professional history even as he is losing track of it. She unpeels the layers of his complicated personality and uncovers information that surprises even her mother, to whom her father has been married for more than sixty years.

As her father deteriorates, the family consensus about who he was and is and how best to care for him constantly threatens to collapse. Levine recounts the painful discussions, mad outbursts, and gingerly negotiations, and dissects the shifting alliances among family, friends, and a changing guard of hired caretakers. Spending more and more time with her father, she confronts a relationship that has long felt bereft of love. By caring for his needs, she learns to care about and, slowly, to love him.

While Levine chronicles these developments, she looks outside her family for the sources of their perceptions and expectations, deftly weaving politics, science, history, and philosophy into their personal story. A memoir opens up to become a critique of our culture's attitudes toward the elderley. A claustrophobic account of Alzheimer's is transformed into a complex lesson about love, duty, and community.

What creates a self and keeps it whole? Levine insists that only the collaboration of others can safeguard her father's self against the riddling of his brain. Embracing interdependence and vulnerability, not autonomy and productivity, as the seminal elements of our humanity, Levine challenges herself and her readers to find new meaning, even hope, in one man's mortality and our own.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1451646119
• ISBN13: 9781451646115
• Release Date: June 2015
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Really thoughtful, very helpful

Just want to strongly echo the other reviews. Loved her thoughtfulness about dementia, relationships and family - and honestly, found it very helpful for thinking about and relating to my aging parents (early 80's) who do not have Alzheimers, but are certainly getting older. A very respectful and loving book, smart. Recommend it a LOT.

Why You Should Read Levine's Story about Dementia

I got a great deal out of reading Levine's fascinating book about her father's dementia. It made such compelling reading that the book was hard to put down. What I especially admired was Levine's skillful combining of autobiographical detail and informed discussion of dementia. The two aspects of the book flowed into each other: the autobiographical details provide evidence for Levine's take on debates about dementia. She's fully informed about these debates having read both neuroscientists and psychologists and more on the issue. She is thus able to discuss the science involved without overwhelming the reader.Second, as with many others I'm sure, elements of Levine's story resonated with my experiences with relatives who are aging. Levine's understanding of dementia and her description of the problems of assisted living were illuminating. Third, I was persuaded by Levine's view of dementia, and the side she takes in ongoing debates. While in no way denying the biological changes in the brain that go with aging, Levine shows that the way a person reacts to neurological changes (the tangled plaques, etc) depends on her context-on her social and emotional environment. Also, how others respond to one's aging determines one's vulnerability to dementia. This very much fits in with my interest in the social construction of "aging," and in how age discourse impacts on those of us, indeed, aging, from the marketing geared to this group to the continued dismissal and marginalizing of the elderly in a youth-obsessed culture. Levine's analysis of the Cartesian model and what's wrong with it resonates very much with new work by Teresa Brennan, in her posthumous Transmission of Affect. Reader's of Levine's book might appreciate reading Brennan. Finally, Levine's discussion of the caregiver and different expectations of this role, different possibilities of the role, was very informative.Levine's openness about her family and personal life is remarkable and draws the reader in. I was fascinated with drama that emerges in Levine's relationship with her mother, and appreciated the irony that Levine could get closer to her father once he could no longer provoke intellectual battles with his daughter: This supports Levine's view that the rational, individual self of the western enlightenment omits many other important ways of being, loving and knowing.Levine's writing throughout does not get in the way of what she's saying, which, for me, is the highest praise one can give about any writing.I appreciated the opportunity to read this book. It should be mandatory reading for every social worker, doctor and caregiver!

This book has it all

A memoir of a New York leftwing Jewish family, a social science analysis of aging and dementia, a thoroughgoing psychological self-analysis - this book really has it all. The story was occasioned by Levine's father's Alzheimer's, but it goes in many fascinating directions to dwell on human relationships, change and growth. Levine, whose previous books I also thoroughly enjoyed for their combination of passionate politics and tremendous writing talent, has bitten off a lot with this memoir, but she is up to the task. I gained an appreciation for dementia I lacked before, and I am actually much less afraid of the subject - this is quite an achievement! The book is as engrossing as a novel, and instead of studiously underlining in my usual fashion, I found myself turning pages eagerly without worrying that I would forget the important points. I am going to recommend this book to several reading groups - and I am confident that they will thank me! This is a really humanistic work and it deserves a wide audience.

Do You Remember Me?

With great honesty and insight, Judith Levine chronicles complicated and painful family relationships. These intertwine in the struggle to understand and deal with her father's downward spiral into the world of Alzheimer's. The important message at the end of the author's arduous journey is that the soul of the individual, the self, is ever viable and needs to be respected and nourished while going in new and uncharted directions. I highly recommend this timely, sensitive, and well-researched book which is both moving and provocative.

Great book!

Do You Remember Me isn't just about Alzheimer's. I could hardly put it down, even though no one in my family or anyone I know well has ever been diagnosed with this malady. Levine's book is funny, poignant, flinty, tender, and very moving. On a deep and affecting level, it's about the struggles we all go through to remain generous, loving and connected in a world that, more and more, pressures us to shut down emotionally and look out solely for Number One. I read this book over a week ago and am still thinking about it.