In My Father's Garden: A Daughter's Search for a Spiritual Life

by Kim Chernin

Kim Chernin's mother was a leftist firebrand, an American Marxist at mid-century, when it was dangerous to be one. Her father, a quiet man, was no less radical. Why then, decades later, does their daughter--a liberal California psychoanalyst and writer--find herself drawn toward a spirituality that would have shocked her parents? Through three personal stories, Chernin tackles the questions that pull at all of how to make sense in a world whose order isn't always apparent, and how to find balance between the mind and the spirit. "Kim Chernin writes with immediacy and intimacy."--City Life, London.

Genres: Memoir

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 1996

About the author

Kim Chernin (born May 7, 1940, Bronx, New York) is an American fiction and nonfiction writer, feminist, poet, and memoirist. She has published fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the book was very well written. It is a wistful memoir in which Kim finds something spiritual in her life with her father in spite of not being taught anything positive about religion or God. Her mother was a communist activist as was her father, but the mother was noisier in her approach and was arrested during the McCarthy Era for her activities. The father was a bit more reserved and Chernin finds his "synagogue" in the garden where he loved to get away the "world". I buy her interpretation and meditation and I am glad that she found some comfort in this way.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chernin tackles the questions that pull at all of us: how to make sense in a world whose order isn't always apparent, and how to find balance between the mind and the spirit

[Rivkah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really thought the book was only mediocer. It was basically a poetic memoir of someone who grew up in the marxist movement, and aside from that, there really isn't anything sugnificant about it.

[Davina · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was not meant for me at all. I found it boring and dry.