Portland, OR
Destroy This House: Amanda Uhle
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Description from the publisher
The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome Amanda Uhle to celebrate her memoir, Destroy This House. About the book: For fans of The Glass Castle and The Liars’ Club, a tender, heartbreaking, and hilarious memoir written with “unwavering affection” (ELLE) chronicling the challenges of growing up with a desperately scheming father, a mother plagued by an acute hoarding disorder, and parenting parents while seeking independence. The Long family’s love was fierce, their lifestyle bizarre, and their deceptions countless. Once her parents were gone, Amanda Uhle realized she was closer to them than anyone else, yet she found herself utterly confounded by the lives they had led. Amanda’s striving fashion designer mother and her charismatic wheeler-dealer father wove a complex life together that spanned ten different homes across five states over forty perplexing years. Throughout her childhood, as her mother’s hoarding disorder flourished and her father’s schemes crumbled, contradictions abounded. They bartered for dental surgery and drove their massive Lincoln Town Car to the food bank. When financial ruin struck, they abandoned their repossessed mansion for humble parish housing, and Amanda’s father became a preacher. They swung between being filthy rich and dirt poor, devious and virtuous, lonely and loved, fake and real. In this “iconic, only-in-America fable of desperate Midwestern dreamers” (Dave Eggers, bestselling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), Amanda sets out to document her parents’ unbelievable exploits and her own hard-won escape into independence. With humor and tenderness, Uhle has crafted a heartfelt and utterly unique memoir, capturing the raucousness, pain, joy, and ultimately, the boundless love that exists between all parents and children.
From Literary Arts, who publish it in their own public calendar.
Also that day nearby
- Wed Nov 11, 6:00 PM. CNA Board Meeting, McMenamins Kennedy School Community Room
- Wed Nov 11, 6:30 PM. Exploit Workshop, Section 2
- Wed Nov 11, 6:30 PM. Portland Drupal User Group, Hawthorne Asylum Food Cart Pod
- Wed Nov 11, 6:30 PM. Mindfulness for Every Body, Westside Queer Resource Center
- Wed Nov 11, 6:45 PM. Wind Symphony Rehearsal!
More from Literary Arts
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- Sat Nov 14, 10:00 AM. Writing with Tarot, Online via Zoom
- Tue Nov 17, 5:30 PM. November Write-In: Ancestors, Literary Arts
- Thu Nov 19, 7:00 PM. Slamlandia - November, Literary Arts
- Tue Nov 24, 6:30 PM. Rebecca Handler in conversation with Selina Fillinger, Literary Arts