The Family Heart: A Memoir of When Our Son Came Out

by Robb Forman Dew

The author of Dale Loves Sophie to Death depicts the depths of family love in this recounting of the time when her son told her that he was gay and the events that followed. 75,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, Memoir, Book Club, Biography, Gay, Queer

229 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Granddaughter of US poet, essayist and political writer John Crowe Ransom. Godfather was US poet, essayist, academic Robert Penn Warren. Grew up between Baton Rouge, LA and Ohio, well-connected to Kenyon Review writers and artists. Attended but did not graduate from Louisiana State University.

Her first novel - Dale Loves Sophie to Death - won the 1982 National Book Award. She has taught at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and has received Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007 she was awarded an honorary degree by Kenyan College.

Since 1977 Robb Forman Dew has been living in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where her husband Charles B. Dew is now the Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College. They have two sons.

Reviews

[PatrickLyra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned that parents deal with coming out in any number of ways. I learned that I am not asking too much of my Christian parents to open their hearts and examine their fears. I learned that somewhere on the face of this planet there is a heterosexual parent willing to examine the isolating comfort and egocentricity of her assumptions regarding her childrens' development. Somehow this reassures me, even if the likelihood of my own parents taking on this task of self-examination is slim to none.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This moving, powerful, and well-written memoir describes how a son's coming out effected his family. Even though Dew made some mistakes in the things she said to Steven, she supported him. I liked the book because it was realistic; it portrayed an average family and their struggles to come to terms with the fact that their son would have a different future than they had planned for him. This was set in the 1990s when LGBT people were not as visible or accepted as they are today. It was also a time when AIDS was a quickly fatal disease. Parts of this book, in particular the homophobic comments and attitudes of acquaintances of the Dew's made me angry. The author really conveys her story and the process of coming to terms with her son's sexuality and the process of learning to defend and support him as a gay man.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's son came out to his family during the summer after his second year of college. The book explores the author's feelings and her coming to terms with her son's existence as a gay man. Dew is incredibly insightful and honest re her thoughts, her reactions to others, her conversations with her son and conversations with other members of her family and her friends. Sometimes her honesty is brutal - to herself - as she explains both her positive and her very negative actions/words. I commend Robb Dew for her honesty and for her wonderful acceptance of her son - and the way that she and her husband embrace their new role as advocates for others - family members of the gay community and gay young adults.

[PFLAG Lenawee]

This book comes highly recommended by one of our wonderful PFLAG Lenawee members who generously donated it to another PFLAG family who we are sure will benefit. We're so glad to find out about this resource. ( :

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite coming out story. But this is a story from the mother's perspective. Excellent and moving.

[Roland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised at how good this book was. It is more a memoir of her life, and activism. Even though many things have changed in the past 20 years, i still found the book relevant.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book may have done more good for me than any other book I've read. Oddly, when I nominated it to be the first book read by our book club, others were less impressed. They complained that the author wasn't accepting enough, or not self-aware enough. I'd had the exact opposite impression, wishing that the people in my life could have been as intelligent and passionately loving when I came out. I guess it goes to show that responses to books will always be colored by our personal experiences.

One of the most surprising things that people said was that they didn't see why Dew's son coming out of the closet was such a big deal to her, or even to him. I wanted to tell them to go ahead and come out of the closet then, and see if it was no big deal to their parents. Go ahead, Straight Person. For just one month, tell everyone in your life- family, partner, boss, coworkers, old friends- that you are coming out of the closet. At the end of that month, you can tell them all it was just an experiment or a phase and can go back to your normal, privileged, Straight life. Or can you? Will it be "no big deal" to you for that month? Will everyone just have a laugh because you were still the same person to them regardless?

Robb Forman Dew sees deeper than the surface nicety of coming out being no big deal. She knows that it challenges her place in society. It threatens her status, by proxy. It fills her with fear for the prejudice or even violence her son might face. Decades after she wrote this book, those fears might not be as pressing as they were when she wrote it, but they are still there. The acknowledgement that even the most rational, intelligent, and comfortable of people struggles with these fears should be a wash of relief to anyone else going through a coming out. And to those who don't have to have those fears, or who would claim coming out is no big deal, perhaps this book can provide some perspective.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"But also, some days have long legs. Now and then an ordinary bit of time takes a yawning scissor's step, leaving you to scuttle along behind, scrabbling to cling to ongoing events. I learned this late; when my children were nearly fully grown, because it was exactly such an ordinary moment that enlarged and enlarged upon itself almost three years ago when my son told me that he was gay."
pp.1-2
"Bigotry is the result of ignorance and inexperience, or it is the reluctance of unintelligent people to respond to any knowledge that contradicts their stereotypes. Bigotry is disheartening; it is loathsome, but it is also blatant. It makes itself known. This was something else altogether." p. 140

This book going beyond the very poignant journey the parents took upon learning that their son was gay - the shock, the concern, the pervasiveness of homophobia, their guilt for not recognizing their son's dilemma and their guilt for not fighting homophobia in the past. The book stretches into the depths of parenthood and parent's inability to recognize their own children's identity as something separate from themselves.

[Susan Hyde · Rating 4 out of 5]

A second read for me some 30 years later. An honest and deeply personal accounting of a family’s acceptance of their gay son.

[Erin George · Rating 2 out of 5]

Any gay or lesbian son or daughter would love to have the support of their family like this woman's son did. Great message but very slow read. Unless you are very into this topic it won't hold your interest. Too much background information and not enough relavent topic information...

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I didn't like this book as I was reading it but the more I read the more I liked it. Great book overall.

[Jacob Heil]

LC Call No.: HQ76.2.U5. D49 1994

[Sarah Petersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was really hard for me to read, but it was good. Should make for an excellent book group discussion.

[Zjourney · Rating 3 out of 5]

She makes me feel better about the parenting snafu's we all make. If she started ONE more paragraph with "But" I was going to start screaming....