Carrie Brownstein is best known as part of the band Sleater-Kinney and for developing and starring in the award-winning comedy series Portlandia. She wrote recently at the New Yorker about her dad’s coming out.
Sometimes, a book comes along at just the right time. My mother was diagnosed with lung, bone, and brain cancer on December 23, just days after I received a copy of Lesléa Newman’s new book of poetry about her own journey through her mother’s illness and death from cancer.
Jerry Mahoney’s “Mommy Man: How I Went from Mild-Mannered Geek to Gay Superdad,” is a wonderful addition to the growing genre of LGBT parenting memoirs, not only because of its sharp writing and smart humor, but because it shows us an aspect of LGBT parenting we haven’t seen in a book-length memoir before—two men pursuing parenthood through gestational surrogacy.
The history of out lesbian and gay parents started decades before the term “gayby boom” was coined in 1990. A new book charts that history—so of course I had to review it.
Two new, very different memoirs continue to expand our sense of what an LGBT family looks like. One is the story of a lesbian mom struggling against her son’s anti-gay Catholic school while grappling with her relationship to the Church and to her own mother. The other is about a butch lesbian and her experience being pregnant—the print version of a graphic novel first serialized online.
I’m always fond of showing just how far back the history of LGBT parents goes. Here’s a fun historical find, then: a comic from 1978 (that’s 36 years ago!) telling the story of a lesbian trying to get pregnant.
Some good news to start the new year: Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, Alyssia Abbott’s memoir of growing up in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with her single gay dad, is becoming a feature film directed by Sofia Coppola.
Not one, but two new sources are producing LGBT-friendly baby books to record the highlights of your children’s first years. Which one is right for you?
This past year saw a number of new books for and about families with LGBT parents. Here are some favorites.
Two exquisite new memoirs show the breadth of experiences that fall under the umbrella of LGBT parenting. One asks us to reflect on what it means to be a mother or a father; the other shines a light on a gay father and his daughter in the era of Harvey Milk.
