The Daddies

by Kimberly Dark (Author, Narrator)

A love letter to masculinity, and an indictment of patriarchy.

How do you invest in a relationship built on deception, then break up without destroying everything? Is it possible to leave love intact but transformed?

The Daddies is a story about love and grief – how it hurts to change, even when change is needed. Using hybrid narrative, magical realism and pop-culture analysis, The Daddies offers a dark love letter to masculinity told as a lesbian leather-Daddy love story. The story follows a break-up between adults, lovers, but the metanarrative is about our cultural need to break-up with patriarchy, while still holding onto love for masculinity. The Daddies is about the pain of change, an unflinching tour through the pleasures and horrors of domination.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, Audiobook

11 pages, Audiobook

First published October 11, 2018

About the author

Kimberly Dark is a writer, professor and raconteur working to reveal the hidden architecture of everyday life so that we all discover our influences and reclaim our power as social creators. She's performed stories and poetry at hundreds of venues worldwide and her essays appear in a wide range of scholarly and popular publications. She's the author of "Fat, Pretty, and Soon to Be Old" (AK Press, 2019), "The Daddies" (Brill Publishing, 2019), Love and Errors (Puna Press, 2018) and co-editor of Ways of Being in Teaching (Sense, 2017). She teaches in Sociology at Cal State, San Marcos and in the Cal State Summer Arts Program.

Find book club resources at kimberlydark.com.

Reviews

[Lucy Aphramor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! On stage and in print, Kimberly Dark’s stories disturb, perplex, and reassure and The Daddies is no exception. The story she tells reveals the submerged plot lines that shape the narratives we inherit from dominant culture, such as masculinity being the unique and rightful preserve of cis- het- men. Brave and sexy, it exposes discomfiting truths about agency, desire and power that exist at the messy nexus of erotic-emotional experiences as we negotiate and construct identity, belonging, infringement. Anyone interested in expanding civic scholarship must congratulate her for the metanarrative she usurped in seeking an academic publisher: the audacity! the relief! the necessity! The Daddies is steeped in the theory of a liberatory feminism not as a series of check-points alighted on via citations, but as a lens looked through. In this way, Kimberly enjoins us to envision how the world, scholarship, our conversations and relationships would be different if more of us risked boundary crossing by unsilencing ourselves, not least by reimagining what it is to be an intellectual, a leader, an activist. Definitely a recommended read.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘He beat her just like she was his wife.’

California author Kimberly Dark teaches Sociology at Cal State, San Marcos and in the Cal State Summer Arts Program, is a writer, professor and raconteur ‘working to reveal the hidden architecture of everyday life so that we all discover our influences and reclaim our power as social creators.’ Her books include LOVE AND ERRORS and as co-editor for WAYS OF BEING IN TEACHING Kimberly also performs stores and poems around the globe and has published essays in both scholarly and popular publications.

Kimberly’s book is a series of letters, short essays, thought chains, memoirs – or as she puts it, ‘THE DADDIES is a love letter to masculinity, a kaleidoscope of its pleasures and horrors.’ Or as some have noted, ‘a multi-layered hybrid of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, “autoethnography, biomythography, and collage to explore the concepts of 'Daddy' through a social critique of news and pop culture.” She allows us to view see what gendered interactions are and what they tell us about erotic love and masculinity. Hence we must look at sexual abuse, gendered expectations, identity and desire in a world that is patriarchal.

Gender identity is a key issue for dissection and in Kimberly’s capable hands she relates much of how we view ourselves as reflections of the daddy image. Kimberly has experienced her own gender realization and coming out in response to the daddy figures about which she writes, And it is immensely readable for a very wide audience.

[Tina G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s something powerful, challenging, and absorbing about The Daddies by Kimberly Dark. It will have you thinking, debating, and much more long after you set it down. I put it in my top five books of 2019. I highly recommend everyone check it out- you don’t have to fit in any category to listen to/read and understand.

The Daddies reads as a set of stories that are part experience, part lecture, part spoken word poetry, and part ___(you decide). It takes a sometimes difficult, sometimes funny look into American society’s meaning of “daddy” and the role of gender in multiple areas. It’s powerful, intense, funny, disturbing, somber, plus some…
A small list of things examined: life under patriarchy/how it influences life decisions, how do we talk about sex/gender/sexuality without talking about how we have sex and who’s protected by that decision? Audre Lorde, origin of who’s your daddy, media influences, roles of gender in politics, gender interactions, gender bias, pop culture, what is the proper way for a woman to get money/status/wealth, leather community, what’s the appeal in deviant sexuality, how do our personal erotic choices influence the nation/policy/religion we create/live in, gender conformity, how we are creating the world we live in, femininity, how to maintain yourself/identity, do you remember the first time you heard “Who’s your daddy?”-for each of us the meaning is something different/over the years and as we age it changes.

I sometimes dread when an author narrates their own book, but it wouldn't have been the same/as powerful with someone else narrating, and Kimberly did a wonderful job. I wish she would have been my sociology teacher back in the day.

As stated above, I highly recommend even if this isn’t your typical listen/read. If you are looking for something to discuss in a book club, this would be a great choice.

Parental warnings/trigger warnings: swearing, sexual abuse, me too movement, sex between lovers (can be graphic), Matt Lauer, sexism, and probably more I’m forgetting.

*I was given a code via newsletter. Not sure I have to say it, but here it is just in case...Thank you for allowing me to listen and review the book!

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all: "This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review."

Overall impression: the author has written a very brave book, and I hope it has been therapeutic for her.

Kimberly Dark strikes me as a very strong woman, one who knows what she wants and how to get it. Which definitely comes through in her writing, and in the narration of this book as well. Knowing that the book is very much based on her own experiences, I am impressed with her ability to talk about difficult things in a frank and open way, which I'm sure has been a very cathartic experience for her.

Be warned: this is not for the faint of heart or easily embarrassed.

[Kira Webster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each chapter in the Daddies tells a story in a non-linear semi-autobiographical fashion, examining the various relationships we have to different Daddies, the history of the word, and how it’s not all we think it might be. Some chapters end with a letter to Daddy, with some topics being very tough to read about and others verging on smut. While not a difficult or lengthy read, this book leaves you with much to consider. Unlike any other book I’ve read before, in the best way.