{"product_id":"tell-me-about-your-bad-guys-fathering-in-anxious-times-9781496240507","title":"Tell Me about Your Bad Guys: Fathering in Anxious Times","description":"Michael Dowdy perceives the world as a poet, one with an anxiety disorder. As a result he has rarely experienced fathering or his relationship with his daughter, A, as a linear narrative. Rather, his impressions of fathering coalesce in encounters with the conditions of our time, producing intense flashes of awareness and emotion. Critiquing his own fathering practices, Dowdy's essays move between simplicity--being present for his daughter--and complexity--considering the harrowing present of entrenched misogyny, school shootings, climate change, and other threats to childing and fathering with love, optimism, and joy. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The essays in \u003ci\u003eTell Me about Your Bad Guys\u003c\/i\u003e do not provide easy answers. They follow instead an interrogative mode, guided by A's unruly questions and Dowdy's desire to avoid fatherhood literature's traps: false modesty, antic ineptitude, and defensive clowning. This means understanding fathering not as an ironclad identity or a cohesive story but as a process of trial and error, self-reflection, and radical openness. With measures of dark humor, the essays take seriously the literary, material, and political stakes of fathering and in doing so challenge patriarchal norms and one-dimensional accounts of fatherhood. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Michael Dowdy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Nebraska Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/01\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSeries:\u003c\/b\u003e American Lives\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 218\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.62lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.50d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781496240507","brand":"University of Nebraska Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43369828647049,"sku":"9781496240507","price":21.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_d27ef04f-420f-4ef9-801e-c39f38af2328.jpg?v=1739858586","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/tell-me-about-your-bad-guys-fathering-in-anxious-times-9781496240507","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}