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 and former director of the 826michigan youth writing and tutoring program. She is also cofounder, with Dave Eggers, of the International Congress of Youth Voices, and their work with youth writing organizations worldwide is documented in the book Unnecessarily Beautiful Spaces for Young Minds on Fire: How 826 Valencia, and Dozens of Centers Like It, Got Built—and Why. Uhle is the publisher and executive director of McSweeney’s, an independent nonprofit publisher of distinctive books and magazines. Her new book is Destroy This House.
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Amanda Uhle
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Destroy This House: A Memoir
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.
