Blood, Marriage, Wine, & Glitter

by S. Bear Bergman

S. Bear Bergman is an acclaimed writer and lecturer who travels regularly across North America to speak on trans issues. Bear’s first two books, Butch Is a Noun and The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You , are considered seminal texts on the subject of trans life. In his third essay collection, Bear enters, describes, and rearranges our ideas about family as a daughter, husband, father, and friend. In Bear's extended family "orchard," drag sisters, sperm-donor's parents, Sparkles and other relations provide more branches of love, support, and sustenance than a simple family tree. Defiantly queer yet full of tenderness and hilarity, Blood, Marriage, Wine & Glitter is a beautifully thought-provoking book that redefines the notion of what family is and can be.

Genres: Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, Transgender, Gender

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

S. Bear Bergman is a storyteller, a theater artist, an instigator, a gender-jammer, and a good example of what happens when you overeducate a contrarian. He is the author of Butch Is a Noun (reissued with a new foreword by Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010), Lambda Literary Award-finalist The Nearest Exit May be Behind You (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009), Backwards Day (Flamingo Rampant, 2012), Lambda Literary Award-finalist The Adventures of Tulip, Birthday Wish Fairy (Flamingo Rampant, 2012) and Blood, Marriage, Wine, & Glitter (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013) – as well as the editor (with the inimitable Kate Bornstein) of the multiple-award-winning Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Seal Press, 2010). Bear is also the creator and performer of three award-winning solo performances and a frequent contributor to anthologies on all manner of topics (see his CV for an extensive list of publications of presentations). Bear can be found many days in an airport lounge, writing stories on his laptop and letters on any piece of paper that can pretend to be stationery.

A frequent lecturer at colleges and universities regarding issues relating to gender, sexuality, and culture, Bear enjoys digging in to complicated ideas and getting dirty doing it. He also works extensively helping to create queer and trans cultural competency at universities, corporations, health care providers, and governmental organizations. This work has included training, policy development, policy reviews, and process/barrier audits, as well as cultural awareness consulting for external marketing.

As a Jew, Bear also speaks extensively about how his religious and cultural lives have shaped one another and the intersection of identities, especially as it relates to being both Jewish and queer. He remains exceptionally pleased to have been asked to write the chapter on trans inclusion for Hillel International’s LGBTQ Resource Guide

Less recently, Bear was one of the five original founders of the first Gay/Straight Alliance, a frequent lecturer at high schools and colleges on the subject of making schools safe for GLBT students, and a founding commission member of what is now called the Massachusetts Safe Schools Project. Bear was an insufferable know-it-all in high school, but is reformed these days. Somewhat.

Bear was educated at Concord Academy, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts. He currently resides in Toronto, Ontario where he has set up housekeeping with his husband j wallace skelton and their children, and travels frequently to visit the many people close to his heart.

Reviews

[Jackie B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book for the most part. As another reader suggested, Bear writes about hir family and support networks and how ze treasures and maintains the relationships in hir life. It was really great to read about queer family, in all of its manifestations. There was one part that soured the book for me - when Bear wrote about how, as a young queer, ze had difficulty relating and talking to hit family of origin, and said that it was a similar to the cultural isolation that transracial adoptees face (referring to, usually, kids of color adopted by white parents). It felt appropriative to me - cultural isolate, Bear wrote, is a term used to describe people whose family of origin doesn't share their ethnic or cultural identity. And I read it and was like, no. As a white queer person, I may feel estranged or isolated from my hetero family but I will never, ever know what it's like to be of color and to be adopted by white folks. While I can't relate to my family about certain things, they are still white and we share the same cultural background - we look alike, too. I would just be cautious of linking a white person's queer experience to a POC's experience. Kinda wrecked the book for me.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of well-written, down-to-earth essays, mostly about expanding and reclaiming the term family. There were some really moving pieces about his son, husband, friends, family of origin, religious community, ex-lovers, and everyone else Bear has claimed for family. Although the book does address some tough issues, over all it's pretty heart-warming. I think this quality can't be understated, as cheesy as it might sound. Bear writes about being taught by society that people like him, ("fat or queer or trans or unrepentantly nerdy or polyamourous") don't get families. This collection pretty much unilaterally proves that pervasive myth wrong.
The book is also unabashedly written for queer and/or trans people as readers, which is something I don't take for granted. It's not explaining queer and trans lives to everyone else, it's written with us in mind.
This is Bear's strongest book yet.

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging, thoughtful reflection on parenting, family (in all kinds of ways), faith and tradition. Recommended for individual, book group, or small group reading. S. Bear Bergman is a wonderful storyteller, sharing his life stories from a Jewish transgender perspective, offering a window of affirmation for those seeking others like themselves and a doorway to understanding for others seeking that. Mostly, though, it is happifying to read about someone actively creating happiness and working to make this world a little more just, equitable, and loving.

[G.K. Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes me weepy in the best kind of way; it gives a kind of fierce bouncy hope and positivity about creating queer families. I wish this book had been around when I was just coming out and my mother and my brain were making concerned noises because they didn't know any gay, never mind queer, families; I am glad it is out now, when so many of the people in my life including me are queer or trans or nonbinary. As with all Bear's books it often feels lifesaving, and always feel validating and like home.

[Crystal]

I mean, I liked some of this but when trying to connect to situations outside personal experience the book became less appealing. The appropriation of transracial adoption and the assumptions that of course a friend's cishet roommate must be a hateful, ungiving person if she doesn't want a stranger to both her and the friend to stay at their place. Yes, likely for selfish reasons but whenever I hear this, I always am curious about a person's trauma history. 1 in 4, etc.

[Fred Langridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this collection of tender and joyful reflections on the making of family as a trans, queer, polyamorous and religious person. Each looks from a different angle at Bergman's experience of family - with his son and husband, his family of origin and all the other people who accumulate as family along the way. This book sounds lots of echoes in my life.

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this! Bear writes a lot like his friend Ivan, so it is easy to read and does a lot to normalize the queer, trans masculine family he has created with his husband, their love for their sweet child, and for their other intimate relationships.

I wish Bear had got more into the nitty-gritty of what it looks to genuinely be supported by a community as parents. We hear about a playdate, and about them hosting weekly dinners (rather than being hosted!), but not much beyond that.

I also wish Bear was more conscious of disability solidarity - rather than claiming the way he shows his love to his intimates as mental illness and other similar instances where disability is used as a joke or flippantly.

But overall, I appreciate the lenses Bear write from and his openness in sharing his stories.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was by someone important to me that this was “the right time” to read this book, that I should not wait, and that I simply needed to start reading it.

It was the right time. The book barged into me, ripping up carpets and pointing at emotions long ignored, and handing me plenty of emotions from other people too. A beautiful reflection on queerness and family and everything the words mean together.

[Bridget]

I’m really busy and on kind of a one-book-per-week type beat right now, so this book of beautiful little essays about queer jewish family was perfect. We already know I’m just so deep in love with Bear Bergman’s writing and he continues to hit it out of the park. All my fantasies about having lots of babies and raising them in a big wide intricate community of beautiful people were so fed by this book <3

[Red · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't nearly as impressed by this book as by Bear's others. That may well have to do with my stage of life, more than the quality of the book, but still. I found it boring, pompous, self-aggrandizing, and repetitive. There were a few bizarre and offensive moments, as well: the patronizing edge to the essay about femmes; the expectation, unexplained and undefended, that Bear's kid will have kids of his own; the way that after writing an entire book about different kinds of family, Bear literally called non-blood, non-marriage family "less," which really ended things for me. Oh, and feeling free to lift the term "cultural isolate," which comes from transracial adoptee thinking and organizing, and apply it to queer kids growing up in straight families without any acknowledgement of imperialism, either in the process that the term names or in his own use of it.

The one thing I found of value for me in the book is that for the first time, Bear really names the ways that his relationship with his parents is unsatisfying. It's always a relief to hear someone else talk about that. That's the single thing that saved this book from getting shelved on "not worth the time."

[Juliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable and interesting read. There's a lot of great stuff about family (chosen and biological, though Bergman points out in the title that there are many things that bind people together beyond simple choice or biology) here, and Bergman is pretty eloquent on the subject. Definitely worth a read if you're interested in queer family, particularly queer parenting, but I think there's something here for everyone. Might also be a good read for some straight parents of queer and/or trans kids.

[Whitney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. Written by an intimidating-looking person who absolutely redefines every typical gender role. And then the writer's husband has a baby named Stanley. Meanwhile other lovers are possibly happening. If this book is supposed to encourage conservative-thinking people to embrace those with different lifestyle choices . . . I don't think it succeeds. If it was intended to push at readers' emotional comfort zones, then yes, success!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a phenomenal essay collection that found me at the right time. Bergman was able to take so many things that exist in my mind and heart and put them into concise, clear language while telling stories from his own life. If you're not queer, trans, or polyamorous, you may not resonate as much with this book — or, at least, it will be a window and not a mirror — but I found the way that Bergman approaches his relationships to be incredibly validating and encouraging.

The title refers to different ways that people can become family (wine being sharing a religious community, and glitter being sharing a queer community). Bergman recounts stories about the far-flung, diverse group of people whom he counts as family despite not being linked by blood or marriage (or any other legal tie), and how this has played out in his life, from the multitude of adults sharing in the care of his son to the many ways he offers and receives help and connects people who may be able to help each other even if they don't yet know each other. I admit to feeling envious of the large social circle Bergman had before he even turned 40 (though he says traveling a lot and being extroverted help with that), and I appreciated the essays later on in the book that deal with loss, from the tattoo he got for his ex-wife to how people he thought would be in his life forever fell into the nuclear family bubble and didn't come out. He celebrates the joy of having a motley chosen family while acknowledging that even this family can change over time.

I'm so glad to have finally picked up this book during an inflection point in my own life, where I'm trying to build my own chosen family while also just having appreciation for my own open-heartedness and way of doing relationships, even when not everyone understands. Here's a quotation that really spoke to me, from the essay "Shaking the Queer Tree":

Also, admittedly, not everyone is an interdependence junkie, as I am. That’s perfectly fair, I guess, though really not to my personal taste—I do believe, fervently and deeply, that if we all devoted a certain amount of our time, energy, and money toward looking out for others the world would be vastly improved.

I felt like Bergman gave me the permission to love the way I love and trust that the people who get it will come into my life in time.

[Rowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This spoke to me deeply as a queer person, but I feel like it would also be relatable/informative to many people outside the community as well. A lot of his examples are broadly relatable, like a friend of your parents or a church friend who you were close with growing up becoming family. I definitely agree with him that the way Western culture views family is unrealistically limited; this affects queer people deeply, though not exclusively.

I've read a number of Bear's other books and I feel like he's finally found himself. And it shows. His voice and humor have always been a memorable but this book is better organized, more colorful, and less rigid than some others.

A great bridge between queer families and not necessarily queer families. Definitely worth the read. It's one of the small handful of books I brought with me when I moved overseas. It has many, many sticky notes, which is one of the other highest compliments I can pay a book.

[Danni Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a huge grin plastered across my face the entire time I was reading this book. It was everything I could possibly have needed from a book at this moment in time. It left me feeling better and more hopeful about being a human and existing amongst other humans, about love and connection in this fucked up world. I loved this book so much and I want to hug it forever.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 4 out of 5]

CW: non-consensual circumcision

This was a really good book, except that it repeatedly triggered me with the author's quite blasé references to having his infant son circumcised, and the way in which he doesn't even seem to think of it as an important or significant decision, even while he talks about how important it is to give his son autonomy over his gender identity and presentation.

[nelkku · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look, I really really liked this because chosen family is my favourite thing. I loved mostly everything he wrote about his own chosen family dynamics. That said, I really disliked the way he wrote about experiences outside of his own.

[Twofishie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore this book

This book is full of sweet, gentle gut punches of recognition-of the things I've carried beneath my skin for decades being felt and named by an author who does so with intense care and often love for the things we carry with us.

[Alexa]

Marvelous. I want to take this book and cherish it always. Bergman really and truly understands what it is to love people. Good lessons in here, good food, and I'd be lucky indeed to build a life where I'm half as loved as he is.

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read, as always. It wasn't as life changing as it used to be when I was coming out as queer/trans, which is ok.

[Lori Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the authentic down to earth approach that S Bear Bergman takes throughout and the transparency with their process of transformation. It is an easy enjoyable read.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bergman writes with an abundance of love about the importance of our chosen families.

[Leigh Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a family affair, and you're all invited.

Bergman's collection of essays will spark either recognition and/or hope in you, depending on how much of a kinship web you've currently got. Beginning with the conception and birth of his son, Bergman spins a series of tales about the many ways people can be connected to each other and love each other, only a few of which involve sharing DNA. Bergman has a seemingly boundless heart: he's loved a lot of people, and keeps space for them in his heart and life even when their romantic tie or physical presence has long passed from his immediate surroundings. He's also more in love with his husband than any other writer I've ever read: the book positively glows with Bergman's feelings about him, and it's marvelous to read.

There's an unavoidable undercurrent of sadness, of course, because often these close ties spring up when one's blood kin has rejected them. He candidly describes how being queer and trans affected his family ties, and devotes two of the essays to queer folx who feel lonely ("interstitial") and family members who aren't sure how to support their trans kids properly ("Dear Parents Who Have Written to Me"). Bergman is just as passionate in his sadness and anger as he is in his joy, guaranteeing that every word in the book crackles with life in all of its messy, glorious complications. You get the sense that this is a guy who shows up for every single minute of his life, no exceptions, no excuses. Not a complaint.

There still isn't a hell of a lot of writing from trans people available in libraries yet, not because it isn't out there, but because locating authors and presses is still more difficult than it should be (major publishers take note) and materials will often not be available through your regular jobbers (structural inequality, take note). This book is worth the extra effort it may take to get it into your collection, and not just because Bergman is one of the most famous/visible trans authors writing today. This is the kind of book that could very well save a life, so hurry up and buy it already. Recommended for all collections.

[Lisa Eckstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is S. Bear Bergman's third collection of personal essays, and like the first two, it offers a look at what's currently occupying his life and mind. These days, as the father of a preschooler, Bergman is thinking a lot about family, and the beautiful essays in this book tell all kinds of stories that celebrate all kinds of families. Bergman's perspective on family life is shaped by his experience with being trans, Jewish, an activist, and a hopeless romantic, but the essays address the universal experience of being a part of, and creating, a family.

These essays felt even more personal to me because Bear is a dear friend who I've known since I was 14 years old. I even had the odd and delightful experience of finding an appearance by my own family in the book, specifically the dogs of my childhood. The writing is tender and funny and brought tears to my eyes multiple times, and I think any reader will have the same moving experience.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really beautiful collection of essays about queer family, queer parenting, and intimacy, in myriad forms. What I loved most about it was how hopeful, tender, optimistic, big-hearted, and open it was. It was purely a book about the the deep and abiding love that Bergman has for his queer family, and all the various ways that manifests. It was not a breezy read, necessarily--because family, and parenting, and partnership is complex and often messy, and there were surely pieces in here that touched on heartbreak, betrayal, hurt. But the thing that drove the book was joy, and specifically, that joy that exists among queer and trans folk who build families together. There are so few books like this in the world, books that feel like utter celebration, and for me, this one was an absolute balm to read.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book explores queer/trans/polyamorous/other-nontraditional family structure. It sometimes tends a little sappy for me, but that's because the author is happy and unashamed with the way they've navigated their extended chosen family. Besides, I can forgive sometimes sappy for generally incisive. The chapters are nice and short and the tone is accessible, non-academic or preachy. I would add the caveat that its basically written for a queer audience, or at furthest out, people who have queers in their family. The essays aim to illustrate that happiness is available to queers on our own terms, even when societal forces insist otherwise.

[Marika · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is arguably my favorite of Bergman's wonderful set of books. Here he wove together everything that I love about "family", for every definition of that word. His beautifully and authentically written essays made me laugh, cry, and smile in recognition in turn as he told stories of his own various families and how they relate and intersect throughout his life. Bergman's books are often advertised as "LGBT literature", and he is no doubt every bit as unashamedly queer as I myself am. But, I fully belief that every person who has ever called someone family would find something to love and relate to in this book.

[George Ilsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another collection by Bergman that has the feel of being a desk-cleaner. Some of the pieces towards the end dragged the tone of the collection down. Bergman also has the habit of announcing what someone is thinking. In fact, we do not know what people are thinking. I also needed more guidance when Hebrew terms were being used. Not everyone is totally familiar with Jewish culture, so this reader was lost. Overall, this collection is best dipped into, instead of trying to read it through cover to cover.

[Simona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tender and a bit saccharine, real and a bit over-the-top. I enjoyed Bergman's writing on relationships, Judaism, and the making of family and self.

As was affirmed by others in my queer book club - it can often be bittersweet to read about the beautiful building of queer community when it has felt more difficult or different in one's own experience.

[Gabriel H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still unendingly sweet qnd thoughtful. Rereading has reminded me of how necessary this book was for me, as a guide to seeing any kind of good future for myself. It's still necessary, and I carry bits and pieces of it with me always.