Author Sandra Patton-Imani, a professor of American Studies at Drake University, draws on over 100 interviews with African American, Latina, Native American, White, and Asian American lesbian mothers of various socioeconomic circumstances to show how they have navigated family making. Marriage equality may have helped some of these families move towards equality, she finds, but systemic barriers, especially for queer women of color, still means that many protections, such as second-parent adoptions, powers of attorney, and wills, are still out of their reach.
Patton-Imani argues that the virtual exclusion of lesbians of color from public narratives about LGBTQ families is crucial to maintaining the narrative that legal marriage for same-sex couples provides access to full equality as citizens. She uses the lens of reproductive justice and draws on critical race theory, queer theory, queer of color critique, and feminist research, as well as her own experience as a White woman married to a Black woman and raising children together, to argue that federal marriage equality reinforces existing structures of inequality grounded in race, gender, sexuality, and class. A dense and academic book lightened by excerpts from the interviews, offering much food for thought.
