Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.26 (511 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 147984246X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 240 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-05-20 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Sarah Anne Minkin said Extraordinary book; Cannot recommend more highly. Josh Gamson is a tremendous storyteller. In telling the stories of these much-desired children, Gamson writes of the intense love and intentionality that goes into family-making, together with the challenges of navigating racial, gender, and national hierarchies, such as the ones that come with surrogacy or international adoption. Grief, loss, and exploitation are not to be hidden or made invisible; Gamson addresses them head-on, just as so many parents do, too. This is a book of love, creativity, inventiveness, and it's grounded in the real world. Everyone - whether you have a famil. Spirited, heartfelt, analytic I could not put this brilliant and revealing book down. It tells the story of complex paths to the creation of families with heart, soul and brain. I think it should be widely read, especially by those who create families 'the old fashioned way' and don't have the experiences described here.. Amazon Customer said An Important Book. Josh Gamson is a wonderful storyteller -- reading his book was an amazing journey with these families. His writing brims with tenderness and humor towards his subjects while he simultaneously grounds the reader in the larger economic and social context. This book will speak to anyone who has taken extraordinary measures to create a family and will give others an amazing opportunity to gain new perspective through shared intimacies. Gamson invites us to broaden our definition of kinship and does so beautifully.
. Joshua Gamson is Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity, and The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco.Meli
In doing so, these families challenge boundaries of traditional kinship and intimacies. These are stories of choices made consciously and sometimes uncomfortably to create and combine lives amidst the messy human realities of desire, commerce, science, faith, community and family. This collection is not a roadmap; it is a companion for all those who choose to navigate the world of modern kinship.”-from the Foreword by Melissa Harris-Perry"Gamson shares their tales with an engaging, gently humorous, and at times poetic style. At the same time, he also teases out the connections between individual family stories and the social systems in which they are immersed."-Philadelphia Gay News"The various stories of family creation told in Modern Families--the struggles and the successes--are quite moving."-Brain, Child Magazine“In this book, both carefully observed and deeply felt, Joshua Gamson gives voice to th
Yet each of these families, however they came to be, shares the same universal joys that all families share. A companion for all those who choose to navigate the world of modern kinship, Modern Families provides a “fascinating look at the remarkable range of experiences that is broadening the very idea of family” (Booklist). . The process of forming these families involved jumping tremendous hurdles—social conventions, legal and medical institutions—with heightened intention and inventiveness, within and across multiple inequities and privileges. Joshua Gamson introduces us to a child with two mothers, made with one mother’s egg and the sperm of a man none of them has ever met; another born in Ethiopia, delivered by his natural grandmother to an orphanage after both his parents died in close succession, and then to the arms of his mother, who is raising him solo. These tales are deeply personal and political. A personal, intimate account of the extraordinary ways that today’s families are being created. From adoption and assisted reproduction, to gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families, the stories in Modern Families explain how individuals make unconventional families by accessing a broad range of technological, medical and legal choice