The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir

In her early years, Turkle lived in a three-generation home in New York with her mother, Aunt Mildred, and her maternal grandparents. She was named in the Jewish tradition after her mother’s Jewish ancestors so that “[her] father’s family had no claim on [her] from the start” (7). Her mother left her father when Turkle was a baby but never explained why. From a young age, Turkle realizes that her family is ashamed of her true surname, “Zimmerman,” because of its association with her father. Her family lies to their friends and schools to claim her as one of the Bonowitzes.

Turkle’s mother is secretive in many aspects of life. Despite being lower-middle class, her mother likes to appear “regal.” Turkle discovers documents with incorrect ages and heights that her mother had altered to increase her desirability and femininity.

Having experienced antisemitism during and after World War II, Turkle’s grandparents are suspicious of the outside world and value US privacy laws. The Bonowitzes are close-knit, insular, and mistrust strangers. Turkle’s experience growing up with her grandparents influences her critical outlook of internet privacy laws and social media, where everything is “shareable.” She is also influenced by her family’s interaction with media and politics, particularly ideas about civil rights and democracy.

In 1953, Turkle’s mother remarries Milton Turkle, a civil servant, and they have two children together, Susan and Bryce. To hide her mother’s previous marriage, they move to a new part of the neighborhood and introduce Milton as Turkle’s biological father. Her mother locks away all photographs and documents with the name Zimmerman in a cabinet to hide Turkle’s identity from her new siblings and lies to Susan when she accidentally discovers the truth. Turkle fears that if her secret is revealed, she may be sent away from her family.

Despite her fears, she is curious about her father, Charlie’s, identity. She hunts through the locked “memory closet,” sifting through the photographs and objects for clues to her past. Her only contact with Charlie is infrequent, court-mandated visits between the ages of five and eight, which her mother and Milton unsuccessfully attempt to appeal. Due to their short and rare interactions, Turkle idealizes Charlie, imagining him as a father from a fairy tale.

Another family secret kept from Turkle as a child is her mother’s cancer, which her parents and grandparents refuse to speak openly about. This increases Turkle’s sense of isolation but also her self-sufficiency. Inspired by intelligent female characters in novels and films, Turkle develops her academic and professional interests in research and writing. She is attracted to an academic life and decides to go to Radcliffe college, inspired by a romanticized image of a girl reading in a French café in the college brochure.

In elementary school, Turkle’s teacher is passionate about Shakespeare, explaining how to read for the overall story rather than laboring over difficult details. In junior high, Turkle is placed in advanced classes and excels at what she calls the “review book system,” in which she memorizes what will be on the test to pass (59). However, this simplistic learning method leaves Turkle feeling like an academic fraud and erodes her confidence in her intelligence.

Turkle is a dedicated reader and models herself off heroines from literature. She admires Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice (1813), who furthers her education through reading instead of focusing on the marriage market. Her high school “heritage” literature class teaches her how to read for ideas. When she reads classical Greek myths, she is comforted by their complex family dynamics, which help her understand her own. In ninth grade, her mother’s husband, Milton, legally adopts her. The principal calls her into his office to announce that her last name at school will be Turkle, not Zimmerman. At home, nothing changes, as her family has been lying about her name since she was a baby.

The secrecy surrounding her father and name disturbs Turkle. She struggles to navigate her mother’s undisclosed rules of what topics are taboo. When she wishes to attend intensive Hebrew school, she asks her mother, not realizing that it is too expensive, cost being another one of her mother’s forbidden subjects. In her work, Turkle labels her efforts to read her mother’s mind as intuition.