Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #672516 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-15
• Released on: 2005-11-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The 19 families profiled in this absorbing book face a familiar litany of domestic dysfunction: infidelities, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, messy divorces and the intergenerational estrangement of immigrants. Novelist and social documentarian Bronson (What Should I Do with My Life?) finds the solutions to their dilemmas in the good old-fashioned elements of character and action, as people take stock of themselves and their motivations and painstakingly piece together their relationships and lives. Bronson's is an unromantic view of family life; its foundations, he believes, are not soul-mate bonding or dramatic emotional catharses, but steady habits of hard work and compromise, realistic expectations and the occasional willingness to sever a relationship that's beyond repair. But he also has an optimistic view of today's crazy-quilt of blended and unconventional families, reassuring commitment-shy young adults that "the golden era of family is not in our past, it's in our future." Bronson occasionally lapses into shallow pop psychology, as when he chalks up one husband's philandering to the oxytocin "high" caused by sex with someone new. But usually he offers a probing, clear-eyed, hopeful narrative of familial problems that many readers will recognize. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Bronson interviewed 700 people, 19 of whom are chronicled here. His book is "about decoding the mystery of family life." The stories center on men and women who lead satisfying lives with their families despite destructive childhoods, people who overcome their impulses to repeat what was inflicted upon them, and those who heal in their own particular way, not conforming to any fashion. There are some relationships rescued from the brink and some people whose lives improved after a much-needed divorce or break from their parents. Some couples created compromises by which both get their needs met and contribute equally to the family culture. Others take responsibility for the rest of their lives and no longer let themselves be victims of their experiences. The author examines such subjects as divorce, death, illness, money, prejudice, and abuse. The author of What Should I Do with My Life? (2002) posits that to give and receive love during hard times, it helps to have been shown how beforehand. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Po Bronson travels the country recording the stories of real people who have struggled to answer life’s biggest questions. To learn more about his research, visit www.pobronson.com. He is the author of five books–two novels and three works of nonfiction–and he has written for television, magazines, radio, and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR’s Morning Edition. He lives in San Francisco with his family.

Customer Reviews

Inspires you to commit to your relationships
I think the most striking part of this book is that you feel comforted by the fact that the problems you're facing in your own relationships are commonplace. They're not dysfunctional. Every family has its share of issues and you don't need to feel overly guilty for yours. The book's underlying theme is that families that honesty, consideration, character, belief and perhaps above everything else - resilience, can get you through the worst debacles and that at the end of the day it's probably (though not always) worth the effort.

Stories include:
Resentment about controlling parents who appear to display conditional loving and also about appreciating how much of their lives parents sacrifice to bring the kids up; the search for redemption after abandoning a kid or cheating on a wife, the courage required to break relationships that are dead and the perseverance required to bring one back from the dead (and the effect on kids), dealing with the families of your in-laws and family objection to marriage, how to deal with kids who are falling into bad habits when you feel powerless to influence their decisions because they no longer respect you or listen to you, dealing with the death of a child, how we feel obligated to spend time with our families rather than actually wanting to spend time with them and what we are losing, etc.

Although it may seem that most people cannot relate to these situations... actually I felt an amazing amount of empathy for the families and came away with a renewed conviction that I can get the perfect family life (with all it's frustrations and headaches) and balance it with everything.

If you have any relationship, friendship that you have a certain amount of frustration, resignation about then I strongly recommend this book. It is one of those books that if it hits you at the right time - it could change your relationships and your life.

A great treasure!
Life can be quite a maze of great joys and incredible pain, but every step of the way the greatest thing one can hope for is the capacity to learn and grow. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Pain is a great obstacle and most of us find ourselves trapped for most of our lives by our past.

This book is a true blessing. The book is filled with tons of stories from a multicultural array of relationship experiences where people learn to overcome the life's great obstacles and capture the true meaning of being alive. This book came to me at a low point in my life, when hope was slowly fading from my heart. This book gave me faith that pain is not an end, but a bump in life's journey. It is impossible to read this book and not come away inspired and nurtured by the stories of the people in its pages.

Do not miss the opportunity to experience this treasure as it will nourish your soul, but be warned-- you will be moved to buy this book for the people you care most about in life because this truly blessed experience is not meant to remain a secret.

Wonderful biographical vignettes
Po Bronson's WHY DO I LOVE THESE PEOPLE?, is exactly what the subtitle says...honest & amazing stories of real families. Many of them will open your eyes...some of them will bring tears to your eyes. This book is a must for any troubled family, or anyone who wants a "real" look at families around the world.