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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #115552 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-26
• Released on: 2006-12-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Coping with Imperfection
Many people grew up with the happy hope that they would lead an ideal life within a loving family that was totally devoted to their best interests. Surprise! It usually doesn't work out that way.

Many people feel like their chance for happiness is over when they have a setback in terms of family life.

Anyone who reads Po Bronson's Why Do I Love These People? will realize that the first disappointment is only a minor hurdle along the path to having a better family life. In fact, the latest disappointment is only of middling concern . . . as long as you deal with that disappointment with integrity and love.

Truth is stranger and more fascinating than fiction. Most reviewers would criticize novels based on these stories as being hard to swallow. Real people wouldn't act that way! But extraordinary people have acted in these positive ways and they provide role models and hope for the rest of us.

Based on your own experiences, you'll react more or less to individual stories. But I wager that you'll find some that move you to the bottoms of your feet.

I was also touched when Mr. Bronson included some of his own life story here so we wouldn't feel like he was playing the role of clinical observer. I'm sure it must have been a heavy weight to carry so much love, loss and hurt around with him. But I'll bet that the stories that provide hope felt like life preservers after a while.

I felt emotionally leveled by The Promise, The Cook's Story, The Trial, Dorothy's Child, Jamaica?, The Butcher's Wife, The Unexplained and The Tornado.

The last time I read a book about a series of real-life experiences that moved me so much was Studs Terkel's book, Working.

If you care about having a better family life, read this book . . . and think long and hard about what you learn. Then act!