Out of stock
Price: $29.95
Page Count: 208
Publication Date: May 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77258-163-8
Thoughtfully curated by co-editors who identify as queerspawn themselves, this astute anthology highlights stories by people with LGBTQ+ parents ready to share their experiences without glossing over the complexities of family, truth, community, and culture. Spawning Generations deftly demonstrates how authentic voices emerge when queerspawn have the opportunity to speak for themselves.
-Abigail Garner, Author of Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is
This groundbreaking book provides a lovely and personal entry into the world of queerspawn. As both a queerspawn and queer parent, I felt real gratitude to these brave writers for sharing their stories—they provide insight into my own life as well as parenting guideposts.
-Shoshana Magnet, Associate Professor, Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies,
University of Ottawa
Queerspawn answer, on their own terms, the litany of questions proposed to them by friends, co-workers, strangers, as well as anyone and everyone who have asked what it’s like to be raised by queer parents. Sometimes these questions are asked in genuine and loving ways, but too often, they are voyeuristic, titillating, and upsetting. They don’t want to be your circus sideshow, your poster child, or your role model. They have claimed the pages of Spawning Generations to share their complicated stories of playgrounds, potlucks, pride marches, secrets, family, dancing, desire, mourning, and an intimate view of the best and worst of queer culture.
-Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, Author of How to Get a Girl Pregnant
The highs and lows of growing up in queer families - Now Toronto
Kids of same-sex parents need to tell their own stories - Toronto Star
Podcast episode on rabble.ca/a>
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Finding Each Other
Makeda Zook and Sadie Epstein-Fine
I. BEGINNINGS
Rainbow Kid: Rants and Reflections
Liam Sky
Spawn
Gabriel Back-Gaal
Gathering Voices: An Interview Project with
Young Adults Raised in Queer Families
Sammy Sass
1986
Kellen Kaiser
spawning generations
My Life as a Play
Micah Champagne
Insider/Outsider: Breaking the Boundaries of
Heteronormativity Cyndi Gilbert
Closets of Fear, Islands of Love: Coming of Age in the 1980s
Niki Kaiser, Carey-Anne Morrison, and Lorinda Peterson (Illustrator)
The Love of the Princess: The Kids Really Are Alright
Felix Munger
Sweating the Gay Stuff: The Toaster Oven Tradition
Sadie Epstein-Fine
II. MIDDLES
Eighteen: My First Year as a Grownup Queer(spawn)
Devan Wells
A Homophobe at Body Electric
Christopher Oliphant
Glitter in the Dishwasher
Morgan Baskin
Leslie’s Girl
Jessica Edwards
Roots and Rainbows
Aviva Gale-Buncel
Did I Make My Mother Gay?
Meredith Fenton
Gayby Baby: In Conversation with Filmmaker Maya Newell
Maya Newell, Makeda Zook, and Sadie Epstein-Fine
Don’t Leave Me This Way
Suzanne Phare
III. ENDINGS
Jannit’s Pink Lesbian Kitchen
Hannah Rabinovitch
My Moms Are Getting Gay Married, But I Won’t Be There
Kimmi Lynne Moore
If You’re Gay, What Am I?
Elizabeth Collins
We Are Made of Generations
Jamie Bergeron
Watching Roseanne Dori Kavanagh
Resistance, Like Leather, Is a Beautiful Thing
Lisa Deanne Smith
In Between Heart and Break
Makeda Zook
About the Contributors
About the Editors
Sadie Epstein-Fine was born in 1992 to her two moms, surrounded by eleven other women in their home in Toronto. Raised going to Take Back the Night Marches and Jewish Women against the Occupation protests, Sadie combines her passion for activism with her professional theatre career, as a queer-political theatre maker. Sadie loves going on canoe trips, at-home dance parties, and coffee.
Makeda Zook was born in Vancouver in 1986 to her two lesbian feminist moms. She was raised in a mixed-race family surrounded by anti-oppression politics and her OWLs (Older Wiser Lesbians). Makeda grew up in Toronto going to dyke marches and being encouraged to talk about her feelings. She currently works in sexual health pro- motion for a feminist NGO.
