Anthology on Lesbian Parenting

Book Review : Politics of the Heart, A Les-
bian Parenting Anthology, edited by San-
dra Pollack and Jeanne Vaughn, Fire-
brand Books, Ithaca, New York, 1987.

by Carrie Coy

Five years in the making, Politics of
the Heart is a brand new anthology on
lesbian parenting that tells the stories of
over fifty women in their own voices.

In separate short pieces, they consider
the pros and cons, ups and downs, high
points and low points, and together paint a
vivid picture of what it is like to be a lesbian
mother in the United States in the eighties.

The book is divided into eight sections,
each considering a unique aspect of lesbian
parenting. Section topics range from the
dilemmas of co-parents to legal problems,

OITM Needs You frompage9

it better and get it into the hands of more
people. We’re very proud of what we’ve
been able to accomplish as an all-volunteer
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tribution, advertising, and reporting as-
signments.

Even without a coordinator’s salary, it
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Maybe you could afford to pay for an
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could make a committment to pay for half
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So think about it and give
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cause lesbians and gay men in
this state deserve to have our
voices heard.

preciated and are a vital part of keeping this
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01 comes to you each month
thanks to the continued efforts of a small
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give as much as you're able because lesbi-
ans and gay men in this state deserve to
have our voices heard. Thank you.

from chi1dren’s concerns to the struggle to
deal with homophobia. One section, Con-
flict, looks at the fragmentation of the lives
of lesbian mothers and the search for inte-
gration.

Though the politics and ideologies of
the women emerge in subtle and not so
subtle ways, I was most moved by some of
the smaller moments, the human touches.
In one story, a woman describes a birthday
visit from her deceased lover’s teenage
child. The girl, who was returned to her
father’s custody when her mother died of
cancer, visits Ellen and brings along her
new boyfriend. The two are in the kitchen
fixing hot chocolate and the girl say, “...if I
do ever get serious about someone, I hope
it will be as beautiful as what you and Mom
had together.” It is the first open acknowl-
edgment of the two women’s relationship.

The voices of the children come

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through clearly whether through their par-
ents or in their own words. One woman
remembered a cathartic confrontation with
her fourteen year old daughter. “She
started yelling at me, I hate your hippy food
store. I hate everything about you. You are
disgusting. I can’t stand that you are a
lesbian and shop at hippy food stores. You
are so horrible!” The mother recalls the
blow-up as a turning point in their now
“very, very” close relationship.

Many of the writers are brand new
mothers, raising infants. I sometimes
wished the emphasis weighed more heavily
on older mothers, women who have raised
teenagers and adults. Theirs is a world full
of challenges into which I cannot not even
project myself. Jan Clausen, in one piece
observes, “...at times I’ve been concerned
with what I perceive to be an intense focus
on whether and how to have children, with
a lack of equivalent attention to the array of
puzzling issues that lie in wait for lesbian
parents a little further down the road.”

But to be fair, older mother do have a
chance to tell their stories in this book.
Audre Lorde writes with a backward look-

ing perspective on her efforts to raise her ,

two black children with her white lover.
She talks of her struggles to handle her
anger constructively: screaming at her
daughter’s childish banter instead of a rac-

(Continued on page 15)

The
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