From June ’06 Spotlight: Lakeview therapist Diane Schank is kvelling over her daughter’s new book A MORE PERFECT UNION: HOW I SURVIVED THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE, and she invites us all to Hana’s book-signing event at 7 PM on Thursday June 22 at The Hideout (in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood). A MORE PERFECT UNION dissects modern American wedding rituals from both first-person and third-person perspectives. While recounting her own struggle under the bombardment of psycho/social expectations, Hana adroitly folds relevant cultural history into her narrative to remind us that few traditions, if any, actually date back to Mount Sinai.
Everyone comes to wedding planning with inchoate emotions, and for most Americans this means sorting through a huge multicultural grab bag. Perfect example: the best man, who is not Jewish, gets very upset when the groom, who is Jewish, decides he doesn’t want to wear a yarmulke. The father of the bride expects the rabbi to discipline his son-in-law-to-be, but the rabbi thinks it best to defer to the bridal couple. Oy!
The Hideout is located at 1354 West Wabansia. For more information about the 6/22 event, visit their website. To learn more about Hana, order her books, and/or read additional reviews of A MORE PERFECT UNION, visit her website. To see pictures of baby Milo and find out what Hana has been up to since “the big day,” go directly to her blog — MORE PERFECT — “wherein I attempt to do all the things that women are supposed to do and generally make myself miserable in the process.”
NOTE: In case it’s not clear from the above, Hana has a great sense of humor, and her turns of phrase are often hilarious.
