>> after words airs sunday at 49:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch all previous after words programs on our website, booktv.org. >> you're watching book tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. book tv, television for serious readers. .. on book tvs afterwards program at 10:00 p.m. eastern, the wall street journal's will profile

women who successfully climb the corporate ladder. we wrap up the line up at 11:00 p.m. with cnn political contributors looking back at the 2016 presidential race. that happens next on c-span twos, book tv. first up, here susan. [inaudible] on [inaudible] pho >> welcome everyone. please turn off your cell phone. if you have not already, or if you turn them back on to do business between sessions, thank you for coming. our sponsors as you know by now if you have been here today, we think the knight foundation, we

think of ho,.io we give big thanks to miami-dadt college for all they do, all of of these wonderful volunteers who help, all of the staff who juggle so many plates. we are thankful to all of them. and to the friends who sustain us through their donations and enjoy program start the year.us if you're not a friend, please consider joining, we would be. happy to have you as part of our group.ou if you are here earlier you have met claudette, she and her husband charles, a long time and very avid supporters of the boo fair. they chair the foundation and this is a foundation i have just thanked for their help with the book fair. it focuses on innovation, education and culture with an interest in the

visual and literary arts. they partnered with the miamii book fair to create a price, the miami book fair degroot to prize. that is to to be awarded to an author who has an on published novella. please give a grateful welcome. [applause] >> good afternoon. it is my pleasure this afternoon to introduce susan who will beui in conversation with deirdre donahue. she is is a contributed editor for aarp magazine and was previously a publisher for usa today today. [applause]jour

susan faludi is a prize-winning journalist who has written for the wall street journal, the new yorker, the new the new york times, and harpers, among others. susan flutie came to the attention of many of us in the early 1990s with her book, backlash, and undeclared war against american women which argue for the existence of a media driven backlash against the advances of the 1970s. backlash received the circle award for nonfiction. her other books include, stiffed, the betrayal of the american man, and -- dream, myth and misogyny in an insecure america. susan flutie's latest book, the one she will talk about today is her memoir. in the darkroom, shares the journey of her starter confrontation with the father and subsequent inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and in her ownen haunted family saga.

please welcome susan flutie. [applause] >> susan, give us the background of this extraordinary book. i'm a book reviewer book reviewer and i read about five books a week.igsu this is the best book i have read in 2016, possibly beyond. [applause] >> it you can go on. i didn't mean to interrupt you. can you all hear me? is this working so your question, how did this begin? it began for me, it began much earlier for my father, in 2004 and was sitting i was sitting at home and boxing up notes on my last book on masculinity. when i checked my e-mail and i have this e-mail that the

subject line was changes. and it was from my father. and it said, dear susan, i have interesting news for you. i have decided that i have had enough of impersonating a machoo and aggressive man that i have never been inside. the interesting news which was illustrated with a series of attached selfie's was that my father, without telling anyone had, a month earlier phone to thailand to get sex reassignment surgery. and also, my father was at the time 76 years old. and also, this was seen as a journalism goddess gave me quite the story. and also my father and i had not

really had much contact. we had barely spoken for nearly a quarter of a century. and i was in large part because as my father said, when i wasbe growing up my father was a machn aggressive man. also also autocratic and domineering, bullying, and ultimately violence to my mother into the family. all of which fueled my early feminism. so that is a long backdrop to how i began to embark on this project. what i think is so extraordinary but your book is that it's not just about gender issues and gender identity, it is also about religious identity, it's about national identity. if you could take us back to hungry and your father's background as a

hungarian jew. >> my father was kind of an eye identity -- she was channeling the whole last centuries struggles over identity. it culminated with gender identity, but national, political, racial and religious. so the early story of my father is that she was born -- freedom, only child and son of a wealthy family, my grandparents in budapest. my father lived a very coddled, pampered existence with a series of nannies and tutors and governess is. not very loved by his parents who spent most of their time

making the social scene and going to the opera i really did not have much time for their child.le so that whole privileged life was swept away in world war ii. my father was about 13. throughout my brother's teenage years from like 13 - 17 my father roundup and urgent on the streets of budapest. passing as a christian with false identity papers and a stolen fascist armband. at at one point he would use that armband to pose as a hungarian nazi arrow cross officer so that he could rescue my grandparents from a so-called protected house

whose residents were about to be killed. there is is a certain point in the fall of 44 when the arrow cross which had come into power by then did the so-called officers, there were like teenage thugs would drag jews out of the protected houses and this is the story they would be dragged out and taken and shot. so my father dressed up, it really all he had was this armband and -- without bullets and he marched in and said that he was taking these jersey jews, mr. and mrs. friedman out of the house to be dealt with immediately.ve and they believed him.

my father, all of his life was great trickster among other qualities. >> could you talk a little bit about his photography in his career in brazil. he had a remarkable covering up. in your your career has been in uncovering. >> one of the dramas between my father and me was this contest over here is my father who specialty is not justt photography but altering images. after rather extraordinary te triangulation from hungary to denmark where my father had set up and export import filmmaking distribution business, my father went on to brazil where he took photographs of the amazonian outback for the government sort

of more wpa style for the graphs, the kind i kind of love. ultimately my father's career after arriving in new york who was working literally in the dark room in the days before photoshop. he did a lot of that, his mainhi client was -- in making perfect prints making perfect copies so you could not tell the difference between the original and the copy. all kinds of pornographicf techniques that have wonderful metaphorical residence like masking and dodging. so that is how my father made a living. when my father and i got back together after this e-mail and my father invited me to write her story and wanted me to

investigate her on one level,r but on another level was trying to maneuver to present the picture that she wanted, the way that she wanted to be seen. and of course i as the journalist you like to dig up things and find out the real history was always pushing into my father's pastor is my father would say no we don't need to's talk about that, among completely different person now. so that was always the strugglew between as i referred to my father is the artful dodger, the reporter who wants to get to tha bottom of it. >> but how extraordinary and strange that your father, hungarian jew return to hungry. could you talk about that in

your own trip to see him andtr what was that about? that ab >> as you can tell there are a t lot of mysteries from my father. nothing but mysteries. one of them, may be in a funny way the most difficult, much harder for me to understand than the gender transformation was why my father would go back to hungry. this was remarkable too many hungarian jewish that i talk to. they would say that's a big question, why go back there? some background, hungry protected its jews for the firs, few years of the war or at least did not deport them, and then in the spring of 1944 the germans occupied with very little resistance from the hungariann n

government or military, they they did not have that much choice in the matter, but where they did have some choice was how much to participate in the deportation of the jews. because the -- led by iceman at the time showed up, there are only about 200 officials, and that included the drivers, the cooks in the secretaries. they really cannot have deported hungary's jews without the avid complicity of the hungarian government, military, and all of the civil service institutions. as it turned out hungarian's are very eager to get rid of the jews and within six weeks had

cleansed the countryside of jews, one in three jews who died in asheville it's were hungarian. the famous line about the biggest hungarian graveyard is the field in poland. >> in the first eight days, 30,000 hungarian jews were did not stress compared to hundred 50 in the first years. if you could talk a little bit about how you are affected by your father's decision to become a woman to return to hungry and your visits and what you observed. 1990 a >> will, my father went back to hungry in 1990. so it was a year was a year after the fall of communism, and that is why my father would go back and when i

asked my father why he said well this is my home like it or not. my father was also obsessed with reclaiming the family property. my grandfather owned some very lovely apartment buildings in downtown the family had a summer villa in the hills. when my father wanted to buy the buddha hills property back, it b was not for sale so he bought another very large house about half a block away overlooking the villa where my father spent his childhood. so that was one aspect and those in 1990. it wasn't until 2004 that my father had gender reassignment surgery. when i arrived in the fall of

2004 and began to explore this with my father she was adamant that we did not need to get into that history. of course that's me was rich and juicy and there's no way i was going to understand my father without understanding where my m father came from. it was a long struggle to get to that point. and it was really only in the last years of my father's life that she became more open to exploring her childhood, theori family history and especially her experience being a jew during the holocaust.. we began finally i had to struggle to get my father out of the house.

my father liked to show pictures on her computer all the time ani they'd say let's go look at ther synagogue where you went as a child my father would say will have a picture of that on the computer we don't need to leave. but in the last couple of years before my father's death and maybe because of her awareness, heightened awareness of mortality, that she became not only willing but actually suggested that we start we star exploring places of her past.or we wound up going to the synagogue. >> it's not just about religious or national identity. it seems to be about the identity oft. family. on a positive note it seems you've connected with relatives you have never met. if you. if you could talk a little bit about that. >> another mystery about my

father, he was very adamant about family being important. and a big reason why my father and i barely spoke is because he was angry that i had taken my mother side and their divorce. my father was very violent so naturally i took my mother side. in spite of the talk about family my father had cut herself off from her side of the family, from her parents, my grandparents who i never met who are living in israel.a who, when i was was a child they would write to my father in hungarian, my father would toss the letters aside. my mother ended up writing back in english and then the letters stopped coming.

the rest of the family, the extended family who who part of this ds for after the war, some of them lived in switzerland and australia, and and israel, some in new york my father had no contact with any of them. my when they try to establish a connection my father would not speak to them. so when i began to work on this project with my father i didn't even know if it was going to be a book at this point is going to be a way to get to know my father, i began to go see these relatives. the unexpected and glorious gift was they were so welcoming and warm and jumped into the project

with me and gave me letters, photographs and most importantly their own stories and memories. beyond all of that they said that i set often to me, now you have a family. you are part of our family. and just this morning i got an e-mail from my second cousin in tel aviv. expressing yet again we been writing since november 8 about the election. so there is this side of this kinship that i have been able to reclaim to reading the book. one of the things about the book is how your father was aggressively christian is a celebration of the biggest christmas tree.ri the largest little drummer boy display, the emphasis that he

had unassuming almost new identities and then discarding them was that strange to you that if you want to talk about the fact that you weren't raised really with any knowledge of being jewish. >> i knew i was jewish. we lived in a very catholic neighborhood were somehow there are these bully boys in theod neighborhood and they seem ton figure it out within a week. all of the christmas lights on her house didn't really convince anybody of anything. i think violence is the right i word. there are these masks that my t father put on. they did violence to my father ultimately because it was a denial of who my father really

was. when i started visiting myfa father again and i would bring up i thought it was a little information and suddenly i was on the authority of the hungry and juice and i would trot out the statistics all of which my father knew about what happened during world war ii he would just wave it aside and did not want to get into it. and say it doesn't matter. and yet, at the same time there was after the end of communism which put a lid on all religious expression, when that lid came off all the anti-semitism which had never really went away

reestablished itself very quickly and in the years i was visiting there was the tendency of a very right wing movement that culminated in 2010 with the election of right-wing government. there was a fluorescence of anti-semitism. my father was on the receiving end of some of that. and still my father just wanted to say no, i belong here everything is fine. but then in the last two or three years of my father's life all of the rage about loss and the trauma of the year came back. he it culminated in this day that we went to the

hungarian national museum which is a massive celebration to this fantastical gingerbread identity. and so we were going through century after century of how great hungry this and then finally we went down to the basement to use the restroom and in the seller there was a very little exit and it said survivors. i should say this was also on the anniversary of the 60th anniversary of the holocaust. in the hungarian government had said yes we are going to recognize the holocaust which they do only very lightly.

but one of the ways they said they're going to recognize the holocaust was to have a few exhibits. so this is one of the exhibits stuck in the cellar. we walk in and it is a photographer from israel and there are photographs of jews who survived and went to israel. so this is even a product of hungry. my father started translating for me the signage the museum guard came over and said you're talking too loud and you can buy that information in the gift shop, pipe down basically. my father just lost it. it was as if she were addressing the hungarian country she was

saying you did this, look upon this, look at these photographs these are your neighbors and these were your countrymen, and you'd destroyed them. look upon this. i did not know where this came from.di it was so deep inside my father. and then my father calm down and we walked out on as were walking down the street my father said well, it's not so bad it's well, understandable, and we sort ofd argued back and forth. we did a lot of arguing and myt father said, well if they had a

little book where you could sign it and comment i would've said thank you, thank you for putting the jews and the seller. which is very callous humor. >> i just want to say one thing, i have to say, you reference the project which she did with his own father whom he had a very tormented relationship and the idea of, i really felt that youd showed your father in an amazingly honest way that ended up making me feel incredibly sympathetic. i can't recommend the book highly enough. he sounds like a monster until you read the book. >> thank you. [applause] let's find out about what you would like to know now.

>> who has questions? if we don't have any will let them go somewhere. >> keep talking. h >> would you like to hear her reading? >> let's do a little reading. let's take one question and then we will have a little reading. you have then another ten minutes after that. >> go ahead. >> i'm eager to read your book, and having not read it i'm curious, at that age what was it like for you, for your father to identify gender wise as a female and to go through the gender reassignment? >> what was was it like for me? >> the funny thing is it's not really funny, it it makes complete sense i suppose or to me anyway.

excepting my father is a woman was the easiest part of the journey. much harder was dealing with all of the ways my father had not changed and the ghost that were haunting our past. that said, my father went from being this hyper- masculine rock climber, horseback rider, marathon bike rider, you name and my father tried it on when i was a child. to this at least in the beginning this hyper- feminine persona. when i first came over my father was eager to give me the guided tour of hurt marilyn munro wardrobe. there's all the frills and feathered bows and stilettos, wakes, and all of this stuff.

my father gave me quite the lecture on how it's so wonderful being a woman, you as a feminist all you talk about is the disadvantages. i find only advantages. advantages. men take care of you, and kiss your hand, they open the doors for you, everything is lovely, needless to say that was not my experience of being a woman. and frankly not my father's experience. my father is very handy and very capable building things, skilled at electronics and there were no men in my father's life after the surgery, or before before father.k care of my father. so that was a time that lasted for a while.

overall my father let go of that caricature 1950s persona. in some ways i think my father had to go to that extreme to smash the other face of machoas man and to be able to free herself from this other cage she another trap and gender mold she had put around herself. only then could she become whosd she was, which is someone who is only partly defined by gender, as we all are. i think a great danger of identity is this idea that it's just one thing where identity is a standalone entity you can purchase off the shelf. in our consumer era we have redefined identity that way.

my father was more complicated and more interesting than that. >> shall we take a couple more sense there lining up now? just took a littlera encouragement. >> i'm midway through through the book.. i am loving it. sometimes i wonder if there's really a third gender at least. so if that is so which i think that we would not have to mutilate and alter the body. i'm very interested in what you speak about. i love the line how you knew it wasn't a woman because a woman wouldn't put her pocketbook on a hook. and then yet what would a woman do? i adored being a woman, but i

don't fit into most of the forms. so you have done so much work on misogyny and identity and i gender.mi i would love to hear your inner process of what is this thing called gender. >> the pocketbook story so for those of you have not read the book when i first came and arrived in budapest my father was waiting in the arrivals hall issues dressed in a fairly sedate way, the red dress and pearl earrings, my father loved pearl earrings. she had this white pocketbook

what she had hung on the luggage cart. my first lesson was not something about my father butt something about myself. i think of myself as little ms. feminist on my first reaction was well, no woman would hang her pocketbook there. and that i had to think, excuse me, when did you become such an essentialist. but my father and i in a funny way we sort of met in theny way middle. as my father got older and as i was saying earlier, more comfortable with who she was and at 80s something was not going to be wearing high heels anyway so after a while when we got together we are wearing the same

thing, sneakers and a hoodie jacket. think also my father was able t. let down the whole question of gender and not be so obsessed with presenting one way or another.inning in the beginning when i came over to visit my father i'd say what is this mean, what is it mean for you to be a woman. my father would say i'm much more accepted now. a i didn't fit the role as a man and now is a woman people except me in which that strikes me because she did all be about what how other people see you. but what i think underline that for my father was the desire to somehow breakthrough in extreme and almost pathological tear of

exposing herself. being in connection with anyone. from a father ultimately this is just my theory, there is no final, one smoking gun, but i think a huge factor for my father was wanting to feel closs to people. wanting to show herself. she was so much and hiding all of the time. that's why call the book in the darkroom. my father really wanted somebody to throw open the door and wanted to be seen for who she really was. i think that was part of her inviting me back in

to tell her story. it was also ultimately what i think she wanted from becoming a woman. you raise important question, did she have to have surgery in order to do that? maybe not i don't know. i do do know that my father never regretted the surgery. this change did bring her a measure of peace.ng >> i think we have time for maybe two more questions. >> i haven't read your book yet, i'll probably read it this winter. have have a couple questions. i heard you mentioned about his name and it was a strange name to change it to. secondly i was reading the new york times book review on your book and i was curious why he was. [inaudible]

was he a nazi photographer. >> were having trouble understanding with the mic. the photographer for the review. >> yes was it because -- that's just so strange, was it because he was altering images all of the time? or were did that come from? >> my. >> my father was a big fan of german culture. almost all of it had to do with my father identifying with a time when hungry was part of the austria hungarian empire. he he actually had good reason for that identification. a lot of people in my extended hunger in jewish family year and for those days.

the second half of the 19th century from 1867 when the jews were emancipated and what was the austrian hungarian empire through till the end of world war i was a time of incredible freedom and acceptance for jews. particularly not all jews, because the country desperately needed to modernize, urbanizing industrialized economic germany there wasn't a burger class in the hungarian jews stepped into that and were extraordinarily overrepresented in every field

from industry to banking to law, medicine and in particular the arts, theater, literature, music, painting. my father had a great romance about that time. i think it connected german culture to that as well.l. it was a time when german was more of the language than hungarian. hungarian was a pasted on it became an official language very late in the game. so that was part of it. german was also my father's mother tongue. it's the first he learned from the german nanny which was common among wealthy jews in budapest at the time. w you had a first question -- at

the hungarian name. after the war 1946 my grandfather said let's get rid of this german name and my father picked the name because first of all my father was a big film fan and all of so many f films, hungarian films were processed by -- and it was always on the credit. he could've gone with a name like smith or brown it was a-- w boring name. but he also said the name is a very good hungarian name. it means of the village and hungry. to be hungarian is to be of the personperson.

this is part of my father's ongoing another one of the mysteries of my father remained, a very passionate hungarian patriot. he actually voted for the right-wing government which may be another inkling of why my father could tolerate both the love of -- work and block out the political implications of that. >> i think we better close things right now. thank you so much both of you for wonderful discussion.u so mc [applause] you can pick up at the book station right over here the book and she will be around the corner as many of you know,

follow those who know doing signings of the book. please do that now. if you're staying for the next speaker please have your tickets out and ready to be scanned. thank you. >> sunday, in depth will feature a live discussion on the presidency of barack obama. we'll take in your phone calls, tweets and facebook questions. our panel includes april ryan and author of the presidency in black-and-white. my close view of three presidents and race in america. princeton university professor eddie, author of democracy in black, how race democracy in black, how ray still enslaves the american soul. and journalist and editor of the washington post david meredith, watch in-depth live from noon until 3:00 p.m. eastern on