Freeman's Family : The Best New Writing on Family

Freeman''s: Family is the second literary anthology in the series reviewers are calling ''illuminating'' (National Public Radio) and ''sure to become a classic in years to come'' (San Francisco Chronicle). Following a debut issue on the theme arrival, Freeman circles a new topic that affects us all: family.

Often family is a conduit into the past. In an essay called ''Crossroads,'' Aminatta Forna muses on the legacy of slavery and her childhood in Sierra Leone as she settles her family in Washington, DC, where she is constantly accused of cutting in line whenever she stands next to her white husband. Families are hardly stable entities, so many writers discover. Award-winning novelist Claire Vaye Watkins delivers a stunning portrait of a woman in the throes of postpartum depression. Booker Prize winner Marlon James takes the focus off absent fathers to write about his mother, who calls to sing him happy birthday every year. Even in the darkest moments, humour abounds. In Claire Messud''s home there are two four-legged tyrants; Sandra Cisneros writes about her extended family of past lovers; and Aleksandar Hemon tells the story of his uncle''s desperate attempt to remain a communist despite decades in the Soviet gulag.

With fiction, nonfiction and poetry from literary heavyweights and up-and-coming writers alike, Freeman''s: Family collects the most amusing, heartbreaking and probing stories about family life emerging today.