memoirs

Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home

A Book Birthday for “Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home”

I’m always excited by the publication of memoirs about LGBTQ families, and I’m happy to be part of the blog tour for Lara Lillibridge’s memoir Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home (Skyhorse Publishing), on its launch date and book birthday. Girlish is not a comfortable tale. It is, however, a reminder that we LGBTQ parents are as flawed as any others, and we should not let some ideal of perfection force us or our children into hiding their stories.

Given Up for You

Faith and Family in New Memoir of Queer Motherhood

The tension between religion and LGBTQ identities is often portrayed in black and white—but a new memoir shows us the many nuances in one woman’s journey to reconcile her Catholic faith with her love for another woman as they fall in love, have children, and navigate parenthood.

The Flower Girl Wore Celery

Telling Stories of Jewish LGBTQ Families

The Jewish High Holiday season is this week, so let’s take a look at some new stories that feature queer, Jewish families, including a children’s picture book and a grown-up memoir by a woman with four lesbian moms.

PopDaddy

Gay Dad’s Funny New Memoir on International Adoption

A friend of Jeffrey Roach and Ken Manford once told them that as the first gay dads many people had ever seen, “You’re ambassadors whether you like it or not.” Roach’s new memoir “PopDaddy: Boy Meets Boy Meets Baby” might thus be considered a sort of ambassadorial communiqué, but with a hefty addition of humor and heart.

Paige Schilt and Family

Keeping the Queer in Queer Families

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.

Two New Memoirs Show Transformative Power of Parenthood

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.

A Baker’s Dozen of Memoirs By and About Lesbian Moms

In honor of mothers today, here are a baker’s dozen of memoirs by and about lesbian moms. They are not just for lesbian or LGBT audiences, however, but shed light on many of the universal challenges and blessings of motherhood.

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