\ ,-.._

All You Need is

and Maube Pudding

a review by Maxwell Stroud

 



 

n my shelf is a photograph that was taken by

my father on Christmas about four years ago.

It shows my oldest sister with her husband,

my other sister and her female partner, and

me, all gathered in the living room of my parents’

home. The photograph itself tells a story of love and

acceptance, but ask any one of us about it and you will

get a deeper picture of how we negotiate the tenns of
family.

For myself, that image evokes both memories and

musings. I remember my mother’s dilemma that

Christmas: her son-in-law should have a stocking
with his name embroidered on it, but what about my
other sister’s partner? I wonder how this image of my
family has changed and will continue to change: since
that day, one partnership has faded, and I have come
out as bisexual, bringing possibilities of different con-
figurations.

A review of other family portraits, that ritual of
holidays major and minor, offers a variety of glimpses
of the people I called family on any given day in my
past. It poses a direct challenge to political family-val-
ues rhetoric and arguments over legal recognition of
queer family that overwhelm us with the idea of a
family as a static object, looking the same over time.

And just as my album does that for my family,
Love Makes A Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender Parents and Their Families
questions dogma and stereotype surrounding cultural
visions of the unchanging nuclear family.

Gigi Kaeser and Peggy Gillespie weave together
intimate family portraits and narratives that invite the
reader to meet 43 diverse families as they explore
their notions and negotiations» around family, love,
and commitment. The beautiful ' art book is based
upon the eponymous photography and text traveling
exhibit that has been on display on university cam-
puses and in elementary schools around the country.

The book also combines interviews and pho-
tographs, as in the exhibit, to document the experience
of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered parents

 
  
  

Love Makes a Family
Peggy Gillespie and Gigi Kaeser
University of Massachusetts Press

and their families. It allows all of the family members
— including the children — to speak candidly about
their lives, their relationships, and the ways in which
they have dealt with the pressures of homophobia. As
Peggy Gillespie says of her work, “At the most basic
level, Love Makes A Family combats that homophobia

Photos aside, the words of the children also evoke
powerful images: schoolyard discrimination, class-
room activism, and meaningful family times at home.
One 10-year-old girl said “Recently, I had a dream
that we were in school, and the kids were asked what
they really thought of gays. Then» we talked about

“At the most basic level, Love Makes A Family combats
that homophobia by breaking silence and making the
" ' " invisible-visible‘ ” e ’  '  " 

by breaking silence and making the invisible visible.”
Gigi Kaeser, the compilation’s photographer,
added, “By educating people of all ages — beginning
in early childhood — to celebrate and appreciate diver-
sity, this exhibit contributes to the process of disman-
tling the destructive power
of prejudice and intoler-
ance, thereby making the
world a safer place for all
families.”

what being gay is really about. At the end of my
dream, the kids looked at being gay in a whole differ-
ent way.” A nine-year-old said, “All I know is that I
love my mom, and I really like my mom’s girlfriend.
I keep bugging her because I want her to many my
mom. That’s all.”

But perhaps the most telling evidence that family is
family is family came from a five-year-old, who said
simply, “I like eating pudding with my family.” V

\,/(om RAINBOW c0N /

THE T.V. SHOW BY. FOR AND ABOUT
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Sit back and enjoy our July program filled with
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