My Analysis of "Like Daughter"
“Like Daughter” by Tananarive Due was a surprisingly emotional story. I wasn’t sure how the story would unfold before I read it, but by the first paragraph, I knew I was in for an emotionally challenging read. In the beginning, when Paige alluded that there was an underlying true reason why she didn’t visit Neecy, her godchild, as often, I assumed it had something to do with Paige and Denise’s husband, but as I later found out, my assumption was further from the truth.
For the majority of the story, I was alarmed and confused about why Denise couldn’t stand to look at her own daughter to the point where she demanded Paige come to get her. I was trying to wrap my brain around what so badly could have happened that warranted a reaction like that, but every scenario I thought of was nothing like what actually unfolded throughout the rest of the story.
Reading Paige’s experience and narration of Denise’s childhood, how traumatic and challenging it was for Denise, and how it affected Paige was a heartbreaking yet insightful part to read because of how realistic it was. Having experiences such as parents struggling with alcoholism, children experiencing rape or sexual abuse, and how that affects a child long into adulthood, especially with choices they make and the relationships they form. Often, topics such as the one mentioned in this short story are considered taboo and shied away from but are, in fact, necessary and crucial to raise awareness for and promote those conversations for others to feel less alone and for some to connect their experiences to these topics and realize that what they are experiencing is not an acceptable or universal experience like individuals may be led to believe.
Paige’s empathy and desire from even a young age for Denise to be her actual sister so she wouldn’t have to experience the trauma that she did truly hit home for me and made me feel emotional. I could tell while reading it that watching Denise struggle while they were growing up was difficult for Paige to witness, but regardless of what was happening, she was there for her whenever Denise needed her, even when Denise called her to take Neecy.
Getting to the part in the story where I discovered that Denise made a copycat baby of herself to raise the story’s introduction, everything started to make sense. No wonder Denise couldn’t look at Neecy; it was looking at a reflection of your past self; it must have taken a psychological toll, understandably so.
Neecy’s dad leaving her and Denise was the final nail in the coffin for Denise, so desperately wanting to give her past self a chance to live a life without trauma and pain, and for that plan to be destroyed must be utterly heartbreaking. Even Paige started to blur Neecy and Denise together, seeing her as her best friend’s younger self rather than her best friend’s daughter, which shows how raw and emotional the experience must have been for both of them.
It was comforting to read that Paige took Neecy in, but it also made me feel a little wary because it seemed like Paige was using Neecy as a way to fulfill the wish of protecting Denise when they were kids, which I don’t believe is healthy or necessarily good for Neecy because she may be a clone but she deserves to be treated as her own person not just an extension of Denise or past traumas.
Overall, through the use of cloning and futuristic technology/Afrofuturism, the takeaway I got from this short story is that you can’t project your trauma onto someone else and try to fix it or rewrite the narrative, or else you’re going to find yourself perpetuating that cycle of trauma. You need to take the time to go to therapy, to talk about it, and to heal from it as best you can rather than pushing it away and ignoring it as Denise did.
