Why Do I Love These People?: Understanding, Surviving, and Creating Your Own Family

By Po Bronson

We all have an imaginary definition of a great family. We imagine what it would be like to belong to such a family. No fights over the holidays. No getting on one another’s nerves. Respect for individual identity. Mutual support, without being intrusive. So many people believe they are disqualified from having a better family experience, primarily because they compare their own family with the mythic ideal, and their reality falls short. Is that a fair standard to judge against?” In the pages of Why Do I Love These People?, Po Bronson takes us on an extraordinary journey. It begins on a river in Texas, where a mother gets trapped underwater and has to bargain for her own life and that of her kids. Then, a father and his daughter return to their tiny rice-growing village in China, hoping to rekindle their love for each other inside the walls of his childhood home. Next, a son puts forth a riddle, asking us to understand what his first experience of God has to do with his Mexican American mother.Every step–and every family–on this journey is real. Calling upon his gift for powerful nonfiction narrative and philosophical insight, Bronson explores the incredibly complicated feelings that we have for our families. Each chapter introduces us to two people–a father and his son, a daughter and her mother, a wife and her husband–and we come to know them as intimately as characters in a novel, following the story of their relationship as they struggle resiliently through the kinds of hardships all families endure. Some of the people manage to save their relationship, while others find a better life only after letting the relationship go. From their efforts, the wisdom in this book emerges. We are left feeling emotionally raw but grounded–and better prepared to love, through both hard times and good time.In these twenty mesmerizing stories, we discover what is essential and elemental to all families and, in doing so, slowly abolish the fantasies and fictions we have about those we fight to stay connected to.In Why Do I Love These People?, Bronson shows us that we are united by our yearnings and aspirations: Family is not our dividing line, but our common ground.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 25, 2009
• ISBN: 9780307549303

Po Bronson

Po Bronson is a journalist and author who lives in San Francisco.

Reviews for Why Do I Love These People?

[catzkc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Inspiring stories of how people have worked through family difficulties. A couple of stories towards the end felt rushed, incomplete. Overall, worth your time.

[moukayedr · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting individual stories about family triumph over adversity. It encompasses non-traditional definition of family and the way they build connection, or let go of them. It is uplifting because the destinies of these people turned out right, despite crisis and adversity and evens sometimes because of them.

[stembie3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was fantastic for me. In addition to showing me real people's experiences, the author then explains why he included their stories in the book and what he learned from them. I may have to run out and buy this book instead of just borrow it from the library.

[jasonli_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A spiritual follow-up to Bronson's "What Should I Do with My Life?", "Why Do I Love These People?" tackles the subject of family cohesion through a series of vignettes. Each vignette describes a family's long struggle to define itself as a unit, whatever the configuration may be.I agree with the general idea behind the book: That there are no easy answers and that the lessons are best learned through stories, not rules. Perhaps this is why the process of reading felt like a long, mildly enjoyable therapy session.One thing that sticks out is that the title is misleading: The primary subject of the book is not love, even if it rears its head fairly often. The subtitle is much more to the point.Read if: You like pop social science and have a healthy interest in counseling.Avoid if: You're looking for hard scientific answers, a happy family story or something raw (each vignette is sugar-coated with neat beginnings, middles and ends)

[tloeffler_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting take on a self-help sort of book. Bronson tells the stories of individuals & families who have, in one way or another, sorted out issues they had with their familes. It was interesting, but I didn't find it particularly helpful or inspirational. It could be that I'm just not in that kind of a place right now.