Small Courage: A Queer Memoir of Finding Love and Conceiving Family

by Jane Byers

"By providing a deeper understanding and appreciation of the adoption journey, she enables us to more clearly see and honour adoptive families. ... This memoir shifted my perceptions in the way only compassionate and vulnerable writing can.” —Monica Meneghetti, Lambda Literary finalist and award-winning author of What the Mouth Wants When starting the adoption process, Jane Byers and her wife could not have predicted the illuminating and challenging experience of living for two weeks with the Evangelical Christian foster parents of their soon-to-be adopted twins. Parenthood becomes even more daunting when homophobia threatens their beginnings as a family, seeping in from places both unexpected and familiar. In this moving and poetic memoir, Byers draws readers into her own tumultuous beginnings: her coming out years, finding love, and the start of her parenting journey. Little did Byers know that her experiences when coming out was merely training for becoming an adoptive parent of racialized twins. Small Courage: A Queer Memoir of Finding Love and Conceiving Family is a thoughtful and heart-warming examination of love, queerness and what it means to be a family.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 25, 2021

Reviews

[Sharon I · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt the full spectrum of human emotion while reading this book. I cried for both joy and sorrow. I laughed at the author’s wit. The strongest emotion, love (for oneself, for family and for others) resides at the core of this memoir.

[Ceris Backstrom]

Love reading about mothering!! Love Canadian lit!

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discuss my thoughts on this book, which I read during the 7th round of the Queer Lit Readathon, in this BookTube video.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful