Mignon R. Moore brings to light the family life of a group that has been largely invisible--gay women of color--in a book that challenges long-standing ideas about racial identity, family formation, and motherhood. Drawing from interviews and surveys of one hundred black gay women in New York City, Invisible Families explores the ways that race and class have influenced how these women understand their sexual orientation, find partners, and form families. In particular, the study looks at the ways in which the past experiences of women who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s shape their thinking, and have structured their lives in communities that are not always accepting of their openly gay status. Overturning generalizations about lesbian families derived largely from research focused on white, middle-class feminists, Invisible Families reveals experiences within black American and Caribbean communities as it asks how people with multiple stigmatized identities imagine and construct an individual and collective sense of self.
Invisible Families
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"Arguably the most groundbreaking work on LGBT parenting published in recent years."--Mombian
"[Invisible Families] provides deep insight into the lives and experiences of black lesbians."--American Journal of Sociology
"Social sciences researchers will cite the construction, development, and conclusions from Moore's study for years to come."--Lambda Literary
"Necessary reading for scholars and students interested in family studies, LGBT studies, and race-class-gender studies."--Assoc For Jewish Stds Review / Ajs Review
From the Inside Flap
"Mignon Moore's title says it all: Invisible Families. Scholarship on lesbian and gay issues has been slow to recognize the importance of children and family among those in same-sex relationships and has paid scant attention to racial minorities; nor have students of African American life given much attention to Black lesbians and gay men. We are left with the unfortunate impression, to paraphrase the authors of But Some of Us Are Brave, that all the lesbians and gays are White and all the Blacks are heterosexual. This book stands as a significant corrective to these multiple myopias, offering a nuanced account of the kinds of pressures Black women raising children with female partners encounter, and revealing the creativity and resilience they bring to the struggle." --Ellen Lewin, University of Iowa, author of Gay Fatherhood: Narratives of Family and Citizenship in America.
"Invisible Families shakes up longstanding theoretical conceptualizations of racial identity, family formation, and motherhood, contesting basic assumptions about black families. Tightly conceptualized and highly engaging." - Kerry Ann Rockquemore, author of Raising Biracial Children
"Invisible Families shakes up longstanding theoretical conceptualizations of racial identity, family formation, and motherhood, contesting basic assumptions about black families. Tightly conceptualized and highly engaging." - Kerry Ann Rockquemore, author of Raising Biracial Children
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More About the Author
Mignon R. Moore, Ph.D. is a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. She hails from New York, where she conducted the research for her first book. She enjoys reading, running outside, shopping, listening to gospel music and walking her two dogs. She and her partner Elaine Harley were married in New York City in March 2012. Together they host "Chocolate & Wine Upscale Events for Women," a monthly social gathering for women in Southern California.
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Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Black lesbians are triple minorities and they may face things that white lesbians, Black gay men, or straight people of any race may not. In this study, the author posits that most studies of lesbian families focus on middle-class white lesbians and posits that maybe families of color may be different. Thus, she contrasts the subject families to straight couple-headed families and white lesbian-headed ones.
This book has a certain Afrocentricity that I like. For the most part, the lesbians here are Black women who love Black women and who intensely want their Black children to be active members in the Black community. There's no "post-racial" or "non-racial" nothing here. In fact, while the women here may question sexual orientation labels, they are resolute that they are Black and they are women. The thing is: the women studied here are New Yorkers. NYC has enough Black gay men and lesbians that they can afford to stick with their own. Black gay people who live in places where they may see no other face like their own in gay social circles might not relate to this.
I can almost put identity issues to the side to bring up one important feature of this book. THIS WAS A WEEEEELLL-FUNDED STUDY!!!! Plenty of studies of gay people are catch-as-catch-can. They use snowball techniques. The samples are never more than 20 or so. This interviewer spoke with about 60 subjects. She teaches on the West Coast, but has the funds to do work on the East Coast. She had graduate students assisting her, etc. Rarely do you see a study of gay people, maybe especially gay women, with this much financial backing for it! But please remember this is an academic book. I could not just hand this to lesbian everyday readers. I mean it's not as heavy and complicated as Judith Butler, but it's not a walk in the park like "This Bridge Called My Back" or "Sister Outsider." That's great in a way because this sociologist's study can stand up to any of her straight, white, male peers. It's written like many a sociology text, but some people never went to college and this may be a bit too high-level for them.
In lost of middle-class lesbian circles, heterogender couples are frowned upon. But let's face, in many a lesbian couple, one partner is markedly more feminine than the other. Although the term "butch-femme" rarely comes up, that dynamic is presented a lot. The author prefers the term "less feminine" over "butch." She also avoids dichotomies and uses a middle term "gender blender." Still, in this study of life that is real-world rather than utopic, interviewees admitted that if they liked one type of woman, they knew the only way to get with her was to have the opposite gender expression of hers. I flipped through the bibliography and may have seen selections from "The Persistent Desire: A Butch-Femme Reader" often. If you hate butch-femme, then this book won't be for your test. However, if you just love you some butch-femme, then here it is in droves.
In short, I liked this book. I would recommend for Black lesbians considering parenting, but you may have to be a college-level reader to understand it.
This book has a certain Afrocentricity that I like. For the most part, the lesbians here are Black women who love Black women and who intensely want their Black children to be active members in the Black community. There's no "post-racial" or "non-racial" nothing here. In fact, while the women here may question sexual orientation labels, they are resolute that they are Black and they are women. The thing is: the women studied here are New Yorkers. NYC has enough Black gay men and lesbians that they can afford to stick with their own. Black gay people who live in places where they may see no other face like their own in gay social circles might not relate to this.
I can almost put identity issues to the side to bring up one important feature of this book. THIS WAS A WEEEEELLL-FUNDED STUDY!!!! Plenty of studies of gay people are catch-as-catch-can. They use snowball techniques. The samples are never more than 20 or so. This interviewer spoke with about 60 subjects. She teaches on the West Coast, but has the funds to do work on the East Coast. She had graduate students assisting her, etc. Rarely do you see a study of gay people, maybe especially gay women, with this much financial backing for it! But please remember this is an academic book. I could not just hand this to lesbian everyday readers. I mean it's not as heavy and complicated as Judith Butler, but it's not a walk in the park like "This Bridge Called My Back" or "Sister Outsider." That's great in a way because this sociologist's study can stand up to any of her straight, white, male peers. It's written like many a sociology text, but some people never went to college and this may be a bit too high-level for them.
In lost of middle-class lesbian circles, heterogender couples are frowned upon. But let's face, in many a lesbian couple, one partner is markedly more feminine than the other. Although the term "butch-femme" rarely comes up, that dynamic is presented a lot. The author prefers the term "less feminine" over "butch." She also avoids dichotomies and uses a middle term "gender blender." Still, in this study of life that is real-world rather than utopic, interviewees admitted that if they liked one type of woman, they knew the only way to get with her was to have the opposite gender expression of hers. I flipped through the bibliography and may have seen selections from "The Persistent Desire: A Butch-Femme Reader" often. If you hate butch-femme, then this book won't be for your test. However, if you just love you some butch-femme, then here it is in droves.
In short, I liked this book. I would recommend for Black lesbians considering parenting, but you may have to be a college-level reader to understand it.
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