Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood combines the best pieces from the award-winning zine Rad Dad and from the blog Daddy Dialectic, two kindred publications that have tried to explore parenting as political territory. Both of these projects have pushed the conversation around fathering beyond the safe, apolitical focus most books and websites stick to; they have not been complacent but have worked hard to create a diverse, multi-faceted space in which to grapple with the complexity of fathering. Today more than ever, fatherhood demands constant improvisation, risk, and struggle. With grace and honesty and strength, Rad Dad’s writers tackle all the issues that other parenting guides are afraid to touch: the brutalities, beauties, and politics of the birth experience, the challenges of parenting on an equal basis with mothers, the tests faced by transgendered and gay fathers, the emotions of sperm donation, and parental confrontations with war, violence, racism, and incarceration. Rad Dad is for every father out in the real world trying to parent in ways that are loving, meaningful, authentic, and ultimately revolutionary.
Contributors
Steve Almond, Jack Amoureux, Mike Araujo, Mark Andersen, Jeff Chang, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jeff Conant, Sky Cosby, Jason Denzin, Cory Doctorow, Craig Elliott, Chip Gagnon, Keith Hennessy, David L. Hoyt, Simon Knapus, Ian MacKaye, Tomas Moniz, Zappa Montag, Raj Patel, Jeremy Adam Smith, Jason Sperber, Burke Stansbury, Shawn Taylor, Tata, Jeff West, and Mark Whiteley.
What People Are Saying
“Rad Dad gives voice to egalitarian parenting and caregiving by men in a truly radical fashion, with its contributors challenging traditional norms of what it means to be a father and subverting paradigms, while making you laugh in the process. With its thoughtful and engaging stories on topics like birth, stepfathering, gender, politics, pop culture, and the challenges of kids growing older, this collection of essays and interviews is a compelling addition to books on fatherhood.” —Jennifer Silverman, co-editor, My Baby Rides the Short Bus: The Unabashedly Human Experience of Raising Kids with Disabilities “With a diverse, smart, and political collection of contributors, Rad Dad will be an instant classic among the new generation of parents whose parenting intersects with their politics. There's no way you can put this book down without feeling both inspired and entertained by the bold honesty and fierce love heard in these voices.” —Jessica Mills, author of My Mother Wears Combat Boots: A Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us “Rad Dad is one of the most important voices on the planet—at once parental, political, feminist, humble, and full of heart. In Rad Dad, none of our assumptions about parenting, gender, or the way things ‘have to be’ in the world go unexplored.” —Ariel Gore, author of Bluebird: On Women and Happiness and The Hip Mama Survival Guide "Rad Dad is a rattlebag of the rough-hewn and the polished, the insightful and the infuriating, the comic and the sublime. But it’s always passionate, critical and, in moments, heart-stopping. In short: Rad Dad is fab." —Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing "Rad Dad is a book about all the shapes and sizes that dads come in, united by the simple narrative thread of man and his children. Read the book and love your kids. It's that simple." —Tom Matlack, co-founder of The Good Men Project
About the Editors
Jeremy Adam Smith is the founder of the acclaimed blog Daddy Dialectic, author of The Daddy Shift, and coeditor of Are We Born Racist? His essays, short stories, and articles have appeared in The Nation, Mothering, San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, Utne Reader, Wired, and numerous other periodicals and books. He lives in San Francisco. Tomas Moniz is the founder, editor, and a writer for the award-winning zine Rad Dad . He has helped raise three children and has been making zines since the late nineties. He teaches basic skills classes at Berkeley City College and works with the National Writing Project.