Musician and actor Carrie Brownstein’s autobiography is not about being in a queer family per se, but rather about her own quest for identity from childhood through her years in the riot grrrl band Sleater-Kinney.
Brownstein, also co-creator and co-star of the IFC show Portlandia and a recurring actor on Amazon’s Transparent, has not written a memoir about being in a queer family per se, but rather about her own quest for identity from childhood through her years in the band. She writes at length of her dad’s coming out at age 55, however, which to me is enough to place her book in the realm of memoirs by LGBTQ parents and our children. Brownstein, herself bisexual, offers proof that having an LGBTQ parent doesn’t necessarily mean having an assimilationist worldview, as she writes of “the mainstream’s toxicity” and the context of Sleater-Kinney being “one of fairly radical politics.”
Have no fear, then, those who doubt: Even in these days of marriage and kids, there’s still a fine stream of vibrant, radical queerness among LGBTQ parents and our children. Not that we all have to follow it, but it’s good to know we have the choice. Rock on.
