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“I tend to find the ecstasy hidden in ordinary joys because I didn’t expect those joys to be ordinary to me.” – Andrew Solomon

At a time when we witness daily battles based on issues of difference and identity, Andrew Solomon’s best-selling book Far From the Tree looks beyond politics to our most intimate institution: the family. Inspired in part by his own family’s struggles to accept him as a gay man, the book sets out to investigate how parents respond to a child who is vastly different from themselves and meet the extraordinary challenges they face with love, empathy, and understanding. 

In the new documentary based on the book, Emmy-winning filmmaker Rachel Dretzin brings those hopeful stories to the screen, following families coping with the challenges presented by Down syndrome, dwarfism, autism, and incarceration. Far From the Tree explores Solomon’s own journey to understand how a difference that was once considered an abnormality can instead be embraced as an identity. 

���Ǿ������鶹������ý NYC and �鶹������ý’s Better Life Lab at Betaworks Studios for a preview screening of Far From the Tree and conversation that asks: how do we decide what to cure and what to celebrate?

PARTICIPANTS

Andrew Solomon 
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President, PEN America Center

Rachel Dretzin 
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Emily and Jason Kingsley
Featured subjects, Far From the Tree

Brigid Schulte 
Director, Better Life Lab, �鶹������ý 
���ܳٳ�ǰ�,��Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time

Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Follow the conversation online using and following .