Inheritance

Dani Shapiro has written multiple memoirs.  She has bared her soul and shared her personal life with readers for years.  Imagine finding out that who you think you are, your family history and ancestry turn out to be completely different than the story you have lived for over fifty years.  Shapiro's latest memoir now shares that story, how she found out and how its has changed her life.

Though she has changed names of people in the book to protect their identities, it is an incredible and personal story.  Shapiro does not seem to shy away from bearing her own soul for the public to see.

I have, like others contemplated for awhile the idea of spitting in a test tube and sending it off to find out my DNA.  Also I have thought that I would, like the TV shows, research my ancestors and find out who I am related to going back generations.  Always int he back of my mind is that I will find out that I am related to someone famous or that some surprise will be uncovered in my family history.  But, I have always assumed it would be an exciting revelation.  Dani Shapiro has a very unexpected surprise when she opens the results of her DNA test.

These results start her on a journey to discover both what her parents knew or did not know and why they never shared the information with her.  She is also on a journey to find out who her biological father is and how he came to donate sperm to her existence.

This book is a both a personal story of Shapiro's life and how she comes to grips with who she really is.  It is also a look at the cultural and social norms of the development of treating infertility.  How researchers, doctors and scientists looked at infertility, how families approached infertility and how young men in the 1960s may have not given too much thought to the results of sharing their sperm.

It is fascinating to see how the actions of one generation impact the next generation in ways that hadn't been thought possible.  Science has been moving forward so fast that people are finding out results of tests that were not thought possible a few decades ago.

I will think very carefully before I move forward to test my DNA and look into my family history.