Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women

by Mignon R. Moore

Mignon R. Moore brings to light the family life of a group that has been largely invisible―gay women of color―in a book that challenges long-standing ideas about racial identity, family formation, and motherhood. Drawing from interviews and surveys of one hundred black gay women in New York City, Invisible Families explores the ways that race and class have influenced how these women understand their sexual orientation, find partners, and form families. In particular, the study looks at the ways in which the past experiences of women who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s shape their thinking, and have structured their lives in communities that are not always accepting of their openly gay status. Overturning generalizations about lesbian families derived largely from research focused on white, middle-class feminists, Invisible Families reveals experiences within black American and Caribbean communities as it asks how people with multiple stigmatized identities imagine and construct an individual and collective sense of self.

Genres: Race, LGBT, Sociology, Nonfiction, Gender, Queer, Ethnography

322 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 2011

Reviews

[Kathy Tran]

“The most important thing in the world is family and love.”
John Wooden


John Wooden states that family is important because it provides care, support, and gives unconditional love to each of its members. Family is one of the most essential social groups that we belong to as we grow up, and family will become a part of society. Family is a place we can live, love, and laugh with each member whenever we can return back home as needed. What a pity if someone doesn’t have a family!
Mignon Moore wrote Invisible Families and was published in October 2011. This book describes how LGBT people live in their families and how the relationship is in their family after coming out or coming into parenthood. Moore has spent more than three years in New York for her surveys and interviews with LGBT communities. Through her work, people will understand how race and gender identity impact on people of color’s lives. Black and African American lesbians long for being accepted in society so that they do not have to suffer gender discrimination for living a peaceful life as we are. To begin with, Moore interviewed some gays and lesbians about sexual orientation and desire to form their families. Moreover, she stated that LGBT people of color have multiple marginalized social statuses such as healthcare treatment and unemployment situations. They hide their gender orientation at work for not being fired. They cover their real emotion for not hurting everyone in their families because their transformation can lead to negative consequences.
Invisible Families also bring out tough situations of gay and lesbian personal life. Generally, mature adults will get married and will become parents when they have children. On the other hand, gay and lesbian parents extremely are faced with a tough situation when they make a decision to have children. First, they financially struggle with surrogacy or donor insemination to have their own biological kids. Second, the feelings of violation of moral values torture them to instill their children’s traditional gender norms. Basically, society believes that mothers will socialize children and children’s impact greatly on mother’s behavior, values, and gender roles that will link to the conventional “boy” or “girl” roles as they grow up.
Lastly, Moore introduced a case of a lesbian parent who came out after she had a daughter from a previous marriage with her heterosexual husband. Her daughter kept a distance and built an isolation between their relationship. “Dealing with the culture’s hatred towards lesbianism and lesbian parenting is frustrating, tiring, but dealing with one’s children’s unspoken homophobia is painful” (Moore 2011: 104).
Invisible Families will engage all readers who are interested in social reality. Nowadays, LGBT activities are not big problems in the community because they are being accepted. In the U.S., Title IX protects LGBT students from harassment on the basis of sex stereotypes, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects employees from employment discrimination. For this purpose, Moore’s book assists people to listen to LGBT voices in order to create a better condition of life for adults and their children as well.
I highly evaluate Invisible Families for its true problem-solving stories so that other LGBT can learn and resolve their personal puzzles through gender identity biases. This book is easy to understand its content except for too many characteristics from Moore’s interviews and the surveys that make me get lost sometimes. This book plays an important role in offering readers an opportunity to better understand and sympathize with the well-being of LGBT adults and their children. They need our support and understanding to create a better life with our acceptance and respectability.

[Preethi Krishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating read. Moore explores sexuality, race, class and gender through what she calls an "intracategory" perspective. Through interviews with black lesbians, Moore hits the critical spot to interrogate intersectionality. These women are marginalized because of their race, gender, sexuality and sometimes class. It reminded me of the book, "Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity" by Wayne Brekhus. Moores writes this sociological analysis from her heart. She talks about various typologies among black lesbian women - the straight ups, the hetero-identified gays, the conformists, sexually fluid. She also describes the varying gender representation across these typologies - Femme, gender blender, trangressor. Of course, their class status determines whether they were free enough to be themselves. The alienation of the Black community from White feminism has been analyzed beautifully. Many of them were alienated from their churches too. In a later chapter, Moore describes how lesbian women approach motherhood. Interestingly, their approach varied depending on the timing of their motherhood. Were they mothers when they chose their sexuality? Or were they lesbians when they chose to be a mother? While I have read about intersectionality(of race, class and gender), this book epitomizes it with the inclusion of sexuality. Yet, we are reminded about the salience of race in the lives of these Black women. This is a beautiful book. It feels like it has been written with a lot of love.

[Dalena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! I read it as soon as it came out. After reading it I invited the author and a few other scholars to an author meets critics event where we discussed the book in detail. The discussion was lively and involved people on both sides of the gay family divide. One attendee was very uncomfortable with a man-less family structure, but I challenged him to think beyond binary family structures. The book also engaged scholars who use ethnography to discuss emerging social changes in a discussion about the future use of the findings in the book. Moore's use of deep ethnography coupled with case studies and statistics successfully triangulate the issues black lesbian families face in their personal, professional, and social lives. I look forward to seeing more studies on black lesbian life in the US, especially in light of our "post-racial," post-DOMA state of affairs.

[Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

immensely helpful and insightful to me in terms of examining how and why family formations occur amongst Black lesbians. copious case studies to explore...

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really wonderful book about the intersectionalities of race, class and sexuality.