Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship
AWARDED: Winner of a Ruth Benedict Prize in Anthropology\ This classic text, originally published in 1991 and now revised and updated to include a new preface, draws upon fieldwork and interviews to explore the ways gay men and lesbians are constructing their own notions of kinship by drawing on the symbolism of love, friendship, and biology.\ -Graceful. . . . Valuable for the ways it demonstrates that, like race, gender and sexual identity, the meaning of kinship is culturally relative--and...
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This classic text, originally published in 1991 and now revised and updated to include a new preface, draws upon fieldwork and interviews to explore the ways gay men and lesbians are constructing their own notions of kinship by drawing on the symbolism of love, friendship, and biology. Women's Review of Books Graceful. . . . Valuable for the ways it demonstrates that, like race, gender and sexual identity, the meaning of kinship is culturally relative—and susceptible to change.
Preface to the Paperback EditionAcknowledgments1The Monkey Cage and the Red Desoto12Exiles from Kinship21Is Straight to Gay as Family Is to No Family?22Deck the Halls29Kinship and Procreation33From Biology to Choice383Coming Out to "Blood" Relatives43Disclosing Sexual Identity44Categorical Understandings (Or, It's All Relative)52Family - Which Family?56Conditional Love61Discursive Locations64Taking Identity, Talking Kinship67Selection and Rejection734Kinship and Coherence: Ten Stories775Families We Choose103Building Gay Families107Substitute for Biological Family?116Friends and Lovers117From Friendship to Community122Deliberating Difference1296Lovers through the Looking Glass137The Looking-Glass Other138Power "Differentials," Relationship "Roles"145The Urge to Merge150Narcissism, Kinship, and Class Convictions153Couples Versus Community159Reflections on Metaphor1627Parenting in the Age of AIDS165The Lesbian Mother as Icon168Male-Female Revisited: Insemination and AIDS175Of Death and Birth180Blood Relatives Respond185Parents and Persons1888The Politics of Gay Families195Assimilation or Transformation?197Common Ground202The Big Picture205Reengineering Biogenetics210Appendix215Notes223References235Index255
\ The Women's Review of BooksGraceful.... Valuable for the ways it demonstrates that, like race, gender and sexual identity, the meaning of kinship is culturally relative--and susceptible to change.\ \ \ \ \ \ Contemporary SociologyThe first to analyze the historical conditions, social meaning, and political implications of lesbians and gays' appropriating the language of kinship...A fine book.\ \ \ \ SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and SocietyRepresents a new direction in lesbian and gay studies and in the anthropology of American culture.\ \ \ \ \ \ American Journal of SociologyWeighs in as an important contribution to current debates about family and family values.\ \ \ \ \ \ SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and SocietyRepresents a new direction in lesbian and gay studies and in the anthropology of American culture.\ \ \ \ \ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and SocietyRepresents a new direction in lesbian and gay studies and in the anthropology of American culture.\ \ \ \ \ Women's Review of BooksGraceful. . . . Valuable for the ways it demonstrates that, like race, gender and sexual identity, the meaning of kinship is culturally relative—and susceptible to change.\ \ \ \ \ BooknewsWeston draws upon fieldwork and interviews conducted in the San Francisco Bay area to explore the ways gay men and lesbians are constructing their own notions of kinship by drawing on the symbolism of love, friendship, and biology. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)\ \
