Po Bronson finds plenty of hope for U.S. families

There are plenty of naysayers bearing bad tidings about the state of the American family these days. Seattle native Po Bronson instead offers encouraging words in his inspiring new book, "Why Do I Love These People?" (Random House, 371 pages, $24.95).

The 41-year-old San Francisco resident pens in-depth profiles of 20 families (chosen from 700) who demonstrate great love and resilience in the face of daunting adversity. This new volume follows Bronson's No. 1 best seller, "What Should I Do With My Life?" in which real people recounted facing the quandary of career and meaningful work.

Bronson returns to Seattle four times a year since most of his family still lives in the area and he co-owns a place on Vashon Island. The energetic and earnest talker, still retaining the boyish good looks that once earned him honors as "sexiest author alive" from People magazine, returned to town last week on his book tour.

P-I: What is your strongest memory of growing up in Seattle?

Bronson: We lived on Capitol Hill and my mom worked in a little bookstore next to Starbucks in the Pike Place Market. They sold used books, plus stamps to make money. I came from a family of business people, but my mom had an appreciation for the arts. My mom worked in that store for a year and it was very romantic for a junior high boy to hang out there; it said to me, "Hey, these things are possible."

You did a startling turnaround in your writing career with "What Should I Do With My Life?" You went from satires and business books to that; what caused that change?

It was my divorce. When I got divorced 10 years ago, I could barely write. I didn't complete anything for a year. I grew up in a divorced family so I first thought "So what, I'll just move on." But I had a hard time and I felt guilty and depressed. I was humbled by the depth of these feelings.

I just couldn't write caustically or make fun of people for a while. Rather than making fun of people who were holding themselves up as saviors of the world, I discovered that if I went out and found honest, real, regular people I admired, then that was how I could write again.

How did what you learned from "What Should I Do With My Life?" affect "Why Do I Love These People?"

I wrote about people who have suffered through problems you would not wish on anybody -- that came out of my big desire to do something different. I don't think of myself as a guru but rather as a social documentarian. I think of what I do as the antithesis of self-help; I never reduce people down to simple things.

But I do believe in the transformative power of stories and I wanted that to come across with this book. I was trying to be very careful and I wrote stories with far more dramatic power. ... I myself am a little less present in the text, too.

Did you have any specific thesis in mind when you started this book?

The thesis I had, and one that I was disabused of very quickly, was that modern families have a host of new problems that have never been seen before. ... I quickly learned that every generation has its challenges and problems. Single parenting was just as common 100 years ago as today and there were a lot of other myths I discovered that did take me to a different place.

How did your three years of research and writing on family affect your approach with your own family, both with your wife and kids and with your family?

I found that before, when the kids were driving me crazy or my wife and I were suffering from the stress of parenting and were a little short with each other, I often thought "Is there something really wrong?" But being around other families I learned that regular chatter and chafing is part of family life. That's life. So I'm much calmer now. I know that a little forgiveness is required every day, and I also see the beauty of the ordinary.

With my family, I know they were worried about what I was going to write. So I sat them down and told them, "Seeing what other families go through made me more grateful for what you did." My parents split when I was a kid, but my dad was around all the time and my stepmother put up with a lot of crap. I saw that in retrospect. I also saw a lot of courage and sacrifice, including a working mom who was there to raise three boys. That changed my inclination. It used to be there are ways I had it bad as a kid; now, it's how I had it good.

Your previous book was a No. 1 best seller, was No. 3 even before you appeared on "Oprah." But this new book has been out a couple months and it hasn't made it onto the national best-seller list. How much does that matter to you? Why do you think that is?

Maybe it's the title, maybe it sounds like self-help. I hate that. I don't know. I wanted the title to express the duality of how we feel about family; I certainly did not mean "I" as Po Bronson, although I could see how that might be confusing.

I certainly thought I had written a better book. The last thing I wanted to do was try to cash in on the success of "What Should I Do With My Life?" I worked on this book three years, crossed the country 29 times and spent a great amount of time with families. I did my homework as never before, including a 600-page companion to the book on my Web site (www.pobronson.com). I never thought "Now I wrote another best seller"; I thought "Now I wrote another book," and I hope people will buy this one too. I'm still writing, still getting paid to write, which is good. But I thought this would be the more universal book.

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