- SKU: 9781496240507
- BARCODE: 9781496240507
- VENDOR: BooksCloud
Tell Me about Your Bad Guys: Fathering in Anxious Times - Paperback
Couldn't load pickup availability
Description
by Michael Dowdy (Author)
Finalist for the 2025 Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing
Michael Dowdy perceives the world as a poet, one with an anxiety disorder. As a result he has rarely experienced fathering or his relationship with his daughter, A, as a linear narrative. Rather, his impressions of fathering coalesce in encounters with the conditions of our time, producing intense flashes of awareness and emotion. Critiquing his own fathering practices, Dowdy's essays move between simplicity--being present for his daughter--and complexity--considering the harrowing present of entrenched misogyny, school shootings, climate change, and other threats to childing and fathering with love, optimism, and joy.
The essays in Tell Me about Your Bad Guys do not provide easy answers. They follow instead an interrogative mode, guided by A's unruly questions and Dowdy's desire to avoid fatherhood literature's traps: false modesty, antic ineptitude, and defensive clowning. This means understanding fathering not as an ironclad identity or a cohesive story but as a process of trial and error, self-reflection, and radical openness. With measures of dark humor, the essays take seriously the literary, material, and political stakes of fathering and in doing so challenge patriarchal norms and one-dimensional accounts of fatherhood.
Author Biography
Michael Dowdy is a professor of English at Villanova University. He is the author or editor of several books, including Urbilly: Poems and American Poets in the 21st Century: The Poetics of Social Engagement, co-edited with Claudia Rankine.
Reviews
Exceptional Support and Clean Code
I was impressed by how fast the support team responded to my questions. Even as someone with basic coding knowledge, I found the theme incredibly easy to work with. The code is well-organized, and everything runs smoothly.
Reliable Theme with Excellent Customer Service
After trying multiple themes, I finally chose Wokiee — and haven’t looked back. It’s reliable, modern, and easy to customize without coding. What impressed me most was their support team: fast, helpful, and willing to assist even with third-party issues. That level of service is rare!
Beautiful Design and Great Flexibility
Wokiee is hands down the best Shopify theme I’ve used. The design options are stunning and fully customizable. I was able to build a high-converting store without any external developers.
Top-Notch Support and Regular Updates
The customer support team is incredible — helpful, responsive, and very professional. They’ve helped me resolve everything from layout tweaks to app integrations. Plus, the theme is regularly updated with new features.
Amazing Customization Options"!
Wokiee gave me full creative control over my store’s layout and visuals. The theme’s design blocks are so flexible that I could create something truly unique — without touching a single line of code.
High-Quality Theme with Professional Code
You can tell Wokiee was built by pros. The code is clean and optimized for performance. No bloated features — just what you need. My store loads fast and looks great on all devices.