dani shapiro inheritance a memoir of genealogy paternity and love

This was all something you had heard long before but had not fully digested, it sounds like. And you had also heard from your - the woman you thought was your half-sister - that they used to mix sperm in those days.

She talked about having infertility trouble, that they'd gone to what she called a world-famous institute in Philadelphia for artificial insemination. She said, you were conceived in Philadelphia. And it was like a reckoning.īLOCK: And as you start unpacking this, you think back to something that your mother had told you 30 years before. So it really was kind of a slow seeping in of this is the case.

I thought that the DNA testing company must have gotten it wrong. What was your reaction? Were you - was this traumatic? How did you feel? You compare results with the woman who you thought was your half-sister, and you find out that you, in fact, are not siblings. You took the DNA test, as we say, as a fluke. It's great to be with you.īLOCK: You find this out several years ago. Dani Shapiro unravels her family's story and the secrets it held in her new memoir, titled 'Inheritance.'ĭANI SHAPIRO: Thanks, Melissa. As she would learn, her beloved late father, Paul Shapiro, was not her biological father, and the Orthodox Jewish heritage that she so prized was not her own. But for writer Dani Shapiro, what she came to learn from that DNA test would up-end everything she thought she knew about her identity and her family's history. It started as a whim, an afterthought, really - just a bit of spit into a plastic vial.

Dani shapiro inheritance a memoir of genealogy paternity and love