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Home Fronts: Controversies in Nontraditional Parenting
Jess Wells has invited a host of alternative family advocates to go beyond the rosy picture of perfect health and happy families and explore the truths about gay and lesbian parenting that are not easy to face. Suzie Bright discusses the navet that lesbians have brought to their parenting; James Johnstone recounts the trials and tribulations of being a donor dad, and Rachel Pepper charges lesbians with villainizing the biological mother in custody cases; The result is a hard-hitting, controversial critique of the state of gay and lesbian parenting.
Jess Wells is the author of eight books, including the Lambda Literary Award finalist Lesbians Raising Sons, the novels, The Price of Passion and After Shocks, and several volumes of short stories. She and her son live in San Francisco.
Jess Wells is the author of eight books, including the Lambda Literary Award finalist Lesbians Raising Sons, the novels, The Price of Passion and After Shocks, and several volumes of short stories. She and her son live in San Francisco.
240 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2000
12 people want to read
About the author
Jess Wells
23 books90 followersWells is the author of seven novels and five books of short stories. Her latest work, Dancing Through a Deluge is set in post-plague England, 1351, when a lapsed nun's mistaken identity offers her the dangerous chance to free indentured peasants.
Winner of the Nautilus Silver Prize, Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar is set in 1865 when two extraordinary women establish a raucous trading post for cast-off women. Their mirth is challenged by a greedy mayor and a murderous forger. Reviewers are calling it “exquisitely written.”
She recently re-released The Mandrake Broom: When the Witches Fought Back, a historical novel dramatizing the fight to save medical knowledge during the witch-burning times in Europe, 1465-1540.
Her previous novel,
Straight Uphill: A Tale of Love and Chocolate, delves into five generations of women chocolatiers in a small Italian village. It recently won the Bronze Award for Adult Fiction/Romance from the Foreword Indies Awards 2020! Through the World Wars, back to the Age of Discovery and up to modern times, villagers on a small Italian hilltop struggle with a sense of purpose and the meanings of love. Critics call them “complex characters, vividly drawn” and “delightful proof that a literary novel can be a deeply satisfying page-turner.”
She also released audiobooks for several of her novels, and a collection of modern short stories: The Disappearing Andersons of Loon Lake is now available on Audible.com, Amazon.com and iTunes. DALL highlights life around a small lake in Northern Michigan.
A Slender Tether, is set in France in the 1300s. It dramatizes the early adulthood of Christine de Pizan, the first feminist and first woman to make her living as a writer.
She blogs at at http://www.jesswells.com/
She is a recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Grant for Literature, a four-time finalist for the national Lambda Literary Award, and a member of the Saints & Sinners Literary Hall of Fame. Her work has appeared in more than three dozen literary journals and anthologies, has been reprinted in England and translated into Italian.
Winner of the Nautilus Silver Prize, Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar is set in 1865 when two extraordinary women establish a raucous trading post for cast-off women. Their mirth is challenged by a greedy mayor and a murderous forger. Reviewers are calling it “exquisitely written.”
She recently re-released The Mandrake Broom: When the Witches Fought Back, a historical novel dramatizing the fight to save medical knowledge during the witch-burning times in Europe, 1465-1540.
Her previous novel,
Straight Uphill: A Tale of Love and Chocolate, delves into five generations of women chocolatiers in a small Italian village. It recently won the Bronze Award for Adult Fiction/Romance from the Foreword Indies Awards 2020! Through the World Wars, back to the Age of Discovery and up to modern times, villagers on a small Italian hilltop struggle with a sense of purpose and the meanings of love. Critics call them “complex characters, vividly drawn” and “delightful proof that a literary novel can be a deeply satisfying page-turner.”
She also released audiobooks for several of her novels, and a collection of modern short stories: The Disappearing Andersons of Loon Lake is now available on Audible.com, Amazon.com and iTunes. DALL highlights life around a small lake in Northern Michigan.
A Slender Tether, is set in France in the 1300s. It dramatizes the early adulthood of Christine de Pizan, the first feminist and first woman to make her living as a writer.
She blogs at at http://www.jesswells.com/
She is a recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Grant for Literature, a four-time finalist for the national Lambda Literary Award, and a member of the Saints & Sinners Literary Hall of Fame. Her work has appeared in more than three dozen literary journals and anthologies, has been reprinted in England and translated into Italian.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 21, 2009
Giving this book four stars is tough for me. It's a collection of essays about queer parenting. I have a lot of problems with collections of essays, you know, because the quality and perspectives are inconsistent and often contradictory. Anyway, I've talked about this before.
It really, really blew my mind that there were so many essays in this book that were 1. non-gestational lez moms who lost access to their kid/s in a break up. 2. non-gestational lez moms who had to fight horribly for their rights after a break up 3. gestational lez moms justifying why their ex was never going to see the kid/s again. These were fully children conceived in the context of a relationship being separated (permanently) from their non-gestational mother. Rachel Pepper's essay about why she won't let her partner adopt the baby they conceived and raise together - I read this one first (even though it's at the end) because I've read some of Rachel Pepper's other stuff. Anyway, that woman sounded nuts. There was an interview with someone from NCLR saying "Whoa, lesbians, step up & fulfill the promises you make each other when you conceive that baby." It was very clear what the most hotly contested issue is in queer parenting these days. Both "sides" of the story were represented, and I didn't feel that the book sided necessarily in favor of one or the other. I came away with a strong sense that the kids are the ones suffering, and the courts are so biased by homophobia that they are no help.
Oh, there's other stuff too. Trans-racial adoption (DEFINITELY NOT ENOUGH ABOUT THIS!!!!), interracial baby-making, a tiny smattering of donors/surrogates arrangement, alternative families, co-parenting arrangements between fags & dykes, and so on. But nothing even approached the prominence of the lesbian custody battles!
More than half of the essays in this book are excruciating, frustrating, and infuriating to me. I found myself cursing at the authors, putting the book down, walking away, and still erupting hours later with an angry rant to my wife. Some of the essays were mediocre, and I couldn't figure out how the author even got it up enough to write the piece, nevermind get it published. Some of the pieces were wonderful. I wanted to stand up and applaud. I felt like I understood the world a little better through those few and far between lines.
So, if I had so many problems with this stuff, how did I come down with a four star verdict? As I neared the end of the book, I realized that it was incredible to read such variable opinions and experiences from such a niche population as "queer parents." Even if I totally disagreed with some of the crap in this book, it was awesome to read it. We're reaching a point where there are more people than ever before raising kids in gay relationships, and re/considering how we are doing it, the promises we make versus the promises we keep, how our best intentions become our worst nightmares, and how totally, fully, completely society/the legal system is not on our side... well, that's worth thinking about. Queer parenting is an institution old enough to be self-critical, so G-E-T O-N I-T. I'd love to see a new version for 2009 or 2010, with more attention paid to non-lesbiancustodybattle perspectives, more stuff about trans-racial adoption, gay men starting families (maybe dan savage would contribute... haha), donors and surrogates speaking more freely, and so on.
It really, really blew my mind that there were so many essays in this book that were 1. non-gestational lez moms who lost access to their kid/s in a break up. 2. non-gestational lez moms who had to fight horribly for their rights after a break up 3. gestational lez moms justifying why their ex was never going to see the kid/s again. These were fully children conceived in the context of a relationship being separated (permanently) from their non-gestational mother. Rachel Pepper's essay about why she won't let her partner adopt the baby they conceived and raise together - I read this one first (even though it's at the end) because I've read some of Rachel Pepper's other stuff. Anyway, that woman sounded nuts. There was an interview with someone from NCLR saying "Whoa, lesbians, step up & fulfill the promises you make each other when you conceive that baby." It was very clear what the most hotly contested issue is in queer parenting these days. Both "sides" of the story were represented, and I didn't feel that the book sided necessarily in favor of one or the other. I came away with a strong sense that the kids are the ones suffering, and the courts are so biased by homophobia that they are no help.
Oh, there's other stuff too. Trans-racial adoption (DEFINITELY NOT ENOUGH ABOUT THIS!!!!), interracial baby-making, a tiny smattering of donors/surrogates arrangement, alternative families, co-parenting arrangements between fags & dykes, and so on. But nothing even approached the prominence of the lesbian custody battles!
More than half of the essays in this book are excruciating, frustrating, and infuriating to me. I found myself cursing at the authors, putting the book down, walking away, and still erupting hours later with an angry rant to my wife. Some of the essays were mediocre, and I couldn't figure out how the author even got it up enough to write the piece, nevermind get it published. Some of the pieces were wonderful. I wanted to stand up and applaud. I felt like I understood the world a little better through those few and far between lines.
So, if I had so many problems with this stuff, how did I come down with a four star verdict? As I neared the end of the book, I realized that it was incredible to read such variable opinions and experiences from such a niche population as "queer parents." Even if I totally disagreed with some of the crap in this book, it was awesome to read it. We're reaching a point where there are more people than ever before raising kids in gay relationships, and re/considering how we are doing it, the promises we make versus the promises we keep, how our best intentions become our worst nightmares, and how totally, fully, completely society/the legal system is not on our side... well, that's worth thinking about. Queer parenting is an institution old enough to be self-critical, so G-E-T O-N I-T. I'd love to see a new version for 2009 or 2010, with more attention paid to non-lesbiancustodybattle perspectives, more stuff about trans-racial adoption, gay men starting families (maybe dan savage would contribute... haha), donors and surrogates speaking more freely, and so on.
Read
July 28, 2011A really solid queer parenting anthology that opens the door to really interesting conversations. While it is dominated by lesbians, there is enough here for me as a bisexual to recommend it to others who are teasing out issues of known donors, racial complexities, and other queer centric concerns.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews