Thinking about the possibility of Mitt Romney winning the election. . . thinking about the four states whose voters will decide on marriage equality. . . . thinking about the balance of power in Congress. Yes, I’m shivering, and it’s not because of the small ghouls and goblins who will be showing up at my door tonight.
Stories can be told in many ways. Two new works—one poetic, one academic—take strikingly different approaches to telling the stories of LGBT people and families.
Since we’re talking more than usual about books this week (it being Banned Books Week), I wanted to expand the conversation beyond just LGBT-inclusive children’s books, and point out some very good posts about racial and ethnic diversity in children’s books—specifically related to the covers of such books. It’s easy to quote the proverbial lesson about books and covers, but the reality is a bit more complex.
This week marks the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week, bringing issues of LGBT content in children’s books once again to the fore.
It’s Banned Books Week, the annual celebration of the freedom to read! In honor of the event, here’s a video of gay dads Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, authors of And Tango Makes Three, reading from their book, which for several years topped the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books.
Two new lesbian moms will soon be coming to your TV screens, in the form of Teri Polo (The West Wing) and Sherri Saum (Rescue Me). The pair will play the titular couple in The Fosters, a one-hour pilot being produced by Jennifer Lopez.
NBC’s The New Normal, a sitcom about two gay dads and their surrogate, premieres in a week. ABC’s sitcom Modern Family, which includes two gay dads, has won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. I therefore thought I’d post a list of some of the funniest true memoirs by lesbian and gay parents. Humor can be a coping, teaching, and entertainment mechanism, and the authors below use it in all three ways.
Parents of transgender children “are the best parents ever. They unconditionally love their children, even when they don’t completely understand what their child is going through,” writes mom Tracie Stratton (herself such a parent) in Transitions of the Heart: Stories of Love, Struggle, and Acceptance by Mothers of Transgender and Gender Variant Children, edited by Rachel Pepper. That lesson of acceptance and love, conveyed through the 32 essays in the collection, make Transitions of the Heart a valuable read for any parent, regardless of the gender identity of their children.
NBC affiliate KSL in Salt Lake City, Utah, won’t air The New Normal, a new sitcom about two gay dads and their surrogate, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Bonneville CEO Jeff Simpson, CEO of the station’s parent company, Bonneville International, told the Tribune that “For our brand, this program feels inappropriate on several dimensions, especially during family viewing time.”
LGBT parenting memoirs are few and far between. You’d think any publisher’s marketing and design team would take the time to investigate what’s already been done. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to take drastic measures here and declare a moratorium on LGBT parenting memoir covers with blue gradient backgrounds, all-lowercase white titles, and Ken dolls.
