Books for Parents Archives - Page 9 of 24

Keeping the Queer in Queer Families

November 19, 2015

The tension between assimilation and queerness has long hovered over the LGBTQ community. As English writer Jonathan Kemp said a few years ago, “The assimilationists want gay marriage, inclusion in the military, the right to adopt children…. Queers, on the other hand … [regard] the most vibrant and radical aspect of homosexuality as being precisely its opposition to normative sexuality and society.” Two new memoirs, however, show that these concepts do not always have to oppose each other.

Sleater-Kinney Star Writes of Dad’s Coming Out

October 21, 2015

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.

Lesléa Newman’s Journey Through her Mother’s Cancer

January 26, 2015

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.

Mommy Man: It Takes a Village to Create a Child

June 17, 2014

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.

“Radical Relations”: A History of Lesbian and Gay Parents

May 7, 2014

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 Memoirs Show Transformative Power of Parenthood

March 24, 2014

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.