Amanda Uhle will present her book Destroy This House: A Memoir in conversation with Martin Bandyke on Sunday, Nov. 16 from 2:00 -3:30 pm at the Huntington Woods Library located at 26415 Scotia Rd., Huntington Woods, Michigan 48070. The Book Beat will be selling books at the event. For more information or to reserve a copy of Destroy This House call Book Beat at: 248.968.1190
“Destined to become a classic in the daughter-memoir genre, Destroy This House offers a tour of one couple’s decaying, overdrawn world and the effect it had on their child, a devoted good-girl who did her best to help even as doing so began to compromise her own sanity. The author—a Gen-Xer whose indomitable spirit will be as familiar to readers as her cassette mixtapes—artfully excavates both her n’er-do-well parents’ decaying home and her own furious compassion.”
—Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Also a Poet
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 Destroy This House, 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.
“With riveting precision, candor, and wit, Uhle mixes emotionally complex memories with research into her parents’ audacious schemes in a staggering feat of exorcism and reconciliation, a testament to loyalty, compassion, and love.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
“Refreshing. The author shares at least one quality with her parents: she can spin a good yarn.”
—Publishers Weekly
Amanda Uhle writes about culture, politics, and civil rights for The Washington Post, POLITICO, The Boston Globe, and Newsweek. Uhle is coeditor of the I, Witness series of first-person stories by youth activists, former director of the 826michigan youth writing and tutoring program, and cofounder, with Dave Eggers, of the International Congress of Youth Voices. Their work with youth writing organizations worldwide is documented in Unnecessarily Beautiful Spaces for Young Minds on Fire. Uhle is the publisher and executive director of McSweeney’s, an independent nonprofit publisher of distinctive books and magazines.
Martin Bandyke began his radio journey in 1983 as co-host of Dimension on WDET-FM, eventually becoming a full-time host with a midday shift that ran until 2005. In 2006, he joined Ann Arbor’s 107one as morning drive host and launched Fine Tuning, a Sunday afternoon program that continues to this day.