{"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":"\u003cp\u003eMichael 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe essays in \u003cem\u003eTell Me about Your Bad Guys\u003c\/em\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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMichael Dowdy\u003c\/strong\u003e is a professor of English at Villanova University. He is the author or editor of several books, including \u003cem\u003eUrbilly: Poems\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eAmerican Poets in the 21st Century: The Poetics of Social Engagement\u003c\/em\u003e, co-edited with Claudia Rankine.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichael Dowdy\u003c\/b\u003e is a professor of English at Villanova University. He is the author or editor of several books, including \u003ci\u003eUrbilly: Poems\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAmerican Poets in the 21st Century: The Poetics of Social Engagement\u003c\/i\u003e, co-edited with Claudia Rankine. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Nebraska Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51184819831058,"sku":"9781496240507","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_74c3d975-d0e3-49e5-9351-77da892b5525.jpg?v=1744577848","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/tell-me-about-your-bad-guys-fathering-in-anxious-times-9781496240507","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}