Books for Parents Archives - Page 11 of 23

Catching up with “Pregnant Butch”

April 9, 2012

Back in December, I wrote about A. K. Summers new online graphic memoir, Pregnant Butch. She’s recently finished posting the last pages of Chapter One and the first few pages of Chapter Two—which cover the beginning of her second trimester—so I thought this would be a good time to remind readers of her work and encourage you to take a look. (Some pages are NSFW; we’re talking about human biology here.)

Also, I realized I’d never posted the full interview of Summers I did for my newspaper column, so here it is.

Adrienne Rich: The Passing of a Lesbian Icon

March 28, 2012

Adrienne Rich was a mother, a lesbian, and one of our country’s foremost poets and writers. Today comes the news that she has died at the age of 82. Below is one of my favorite quotes from her works, about invisibility and diversity.

Books for and About Transgender Children: More Than You Think, Less Than We Need

February 20, 2012

Children’s books with gender nonconforming/transgender protagonists are rare, but over the past year or so there have been some encouraging signs of progress.

New Dr. Spock Childcare Book Includes Gay and Lesbian Parents; Iffier on Transgender Issues

January 17, 2012

The new, 9th Edition of the venerable Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock, first published in 1946, includes a section on gay and lesbian parents, the Washington Post informs us. I’ve taken a look, and while there is much to praise, there are also a few obvious gaps, particularly around gender

Top Lesbian and Gay Parenting Books of 2011

December 19, 2011

This year brought us several new books, fiction and non-fiction, featuring lesbian- and gay-headed familes. While we might hope for greater quantity (and greater diversity across the LGBT spectrum), the quality was at least very good. Here are some of the best.

“Pregnant Butch” Takes a Comic Look at Pregnancy and Gender

December 5, 2011

You’re probably saying, “What would make this Monday morning just perfect is a new comic about a pregnant butch lesbian.” What? You’re not? Well, you should be. Go check out A.K. Summers’ new comic/graphic tale, “Pregnant Butch” over at comic collective site Act-i-vate. It’s a funny, insightful, semi-autobiographical look at “a butch dyke enduring that

“Invisible” Black Lesbian Families Made Visible

November 7, 2011

Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women, by UCLA sociologist Mignon Moore, is arguably the most groundbreaking work on LGBT parenting published in recent years. Moore gives us one of the few in-depth looks at lesbians of color, showing how race and class influence their self-perceptions, relationships, and family creation. Her work

New book Explores Lesbian and Gay Adoptive Families

November 1, 2011

(November is National Adoption Month. Here’s my review of a new book on adoption by lesbians and gay men. Originally published in my Mombian newspaper column.) There have been a number of studies over the past 25 years on lesbian and gay parents and their children, but few have looked specifically at lesbian and gay

10 Books Every LGBT Parent Should Read

August 22, 2011

Books about LGBT parenting are few and far between, but here are ten that I recommend for all LGBT parents and prospective parents. I chose works that each showcase a variety of voices, rather than single-person memoirs, so each one would resonate as widely as possible. I also chose books that focus on the emotional side of parenting rather than medical and legal how-to works, since the latter tend to be specific to particular segments of the LGBT community.

I hope these selections, taken together, will help us better understand our collective, yet diverse, experience of being LGBT parents.

“Over the Rainbow” Casts an Academic Eye on Queer Children’s and Young Adult Books

June 8, 2011

Over the Rainbow: Queer Children’s and Young Adult Literature (University of Michigan: 2011) is the first collection of essays devoted to LGBTQ children’s and young adult literature. Edited by Michelle Ann Abate, associate professor of English at Hollins University, and Kenneth Kidd, associate professor of English at the University of Florida, the collection gathers 17