The younger brother of an unnamed narrator asks her to give a toast at his wedding. Close while they were growing up despite the six-year difference in age, a rift has come between them in recent years.
As the narrator tries to figure out what she wants to say in her speech she tells the story of their family. Her brother was adopted from Thailand when she was nine and he was three. She talks about traveling their with her parents to Thailand to get him, the stresses and worries they dealt with, and the struggles Danny faced growing up Asian in a white family.
Immediate Family is, in essence, a long letter from the narrator to her brother, chronicling their relationship as they grew older and the frictions their family experienced. But more than that, the letter details secrets she has kept, about the struggles she and her husband have experienced with fertility and the strains that is causing on their marriage.
This is an interesting and emotional story, but because it’s told in the second person, it often feels like you’re viewing it from a distance. There are some interesting narrative choices that the author makes—at times the narrator refers to her husband as “my husband” but at times, when she’s addressing her brother, she says “your brother-in-law.”
The author’s prose is spare and poetic, peppered with literary references and snippets from Danny’s adoption case file. All in all, it’s a unique read that shows how similar and how different each family’s struggles can be.
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