One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

These plainspoken, cage-rattling essays, collected by Walker (What Makes a Man), address how dramatically the traditional nuclear American family has changed. Jenny Block's And Then We Were Poly sets the decidedly unconventional tone by insisting that her and her husband's embrace of other sexual partners allows them a more joyful, fulfilling commitment to each other. A gay couple adopts the child of a self-destructive street girl in Dan Savage's DJ's Homeless Mommy, then tries to keep the mother in touch with her son. In Sharing Madison, Dawn Friedman, another parent of an adoptee, writes of her agonizing process of overcoming the guilt she feels in having taken baby Madison away from her teenage mother. Antonio Caya, in Daddy Donoring, recounts his rational decision to sire his friend's child, firmly remaining a donor, not a daddy, so as not to muddle the issue. Children of mixed race force a much-needed altering of people's perceptions, as ZZ Packer explores in The Look, while Susan McKinney de Ortega's choice to marry a much younger Mexican man and make a home in Mexico challenges the American notion of middle-class values. These fresh, diverse views represent an authentic, valuable new reality. (Feb.)
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Review

A moving, wildly diverse collection showing how radically different familial configurations can work.

Prompted by her experiences growing up in a family "fragmented and haunted by unfulfilled longings," Walker (Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence, 2007, etc.) looks beyond her well-publicized estrangement from her mother, novelist Alice Walker, to the lives of other writers "searching for authenticity through experimentation" in their domestic situations. The essays she assembles smash class, race and gender stereotypes to collectively demonstrate the fluidity of the contemporary family unit. Resisting the traditional boundaries of coupledom, Jenny Block, on the one hand, celebrates the openness of what she calls a "polyamorous marriage" with her husband and her girlfriend. On the other hand, Judith Levine and her boyfriend, together for 17 years, never married for a number of practical and philosophic reasons. Writes Levine: "A marriage may or may not be a union of love. It is always a union of property...I'd like the state to get out of the sexual-licensing business altogether, actually, for couples gay, straight, bi, or none of the above." Essays by Dan Savage and Dawn Friedman lay bare the highs and lows of open adoption. Savage details the difficulty he and his partner have in deciding what to say to their adoptive son when his homeless, substance- abusing biological mother drops out of touch for more than a year: "Which two- by-four to hit him with? That his mother was in all likelihood dead? Or that she was out there somewhere but didn't care enough to come by or call?" Friedman, while admitting to occasional twinges of jealousy and guilt evoked by having her daughter's birth mother integrated into their lives, trumpets openness for her daughter's sake: "She will never have to wonder why her first mother chose adoption; she can ask her." Rebecca Barry closes the anthology with a frank, humorous exploration of how she and her sister ended up in couples therapy.

Eye-opening and sometimes shocking, as it brilliantly explodes traditional notions about the nuclear family.
— Kirkus Reviews (starred)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (February 19, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594488622
• ISBN-13: 978-1594488627
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #149,430 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've Been Waiting for this Book for as Long as I can Remember, February 20, 2009

By	Alice Herbert "Alice" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

There is nothing more that the human animal longs for than acceptance. This can be hard to come by if you find yourself unable to march to the beat of the common drummer. I have long known that heterosexual, monogamous marriage was not for me. I have long admired families who have chosen their own roads over the ones they are shown. I have long wanted to hear of the stories of those who have found happiness and love not in following but instead in seeking. Finally those stories are here.

That is what this book is all about. One Big Happy Family is about the pursuit of love and family and wholeness with a blind eye to social convention. These writers made me feel at home. They helped me to remember that there is no "right" way to live and to love. They reminded me that living honestly is always more important than living in chains. And they taught me that although others may not accept me, my acceptance of myself is far more gratifying.

These are people who are present in their own lives, active in their own pursuits of love, and accountable for the paths they have chosen or crafted or discovered. We should all be so lucky.

Read this book. Find your way.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "Must Read", February 25, 2009

By	Paula Penn-Nabrit (Westerville, OH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

One Big Happy Family is a fascinating collection of essays about family. Part of what makes the essays so compelling is the fact that they force the reader to confront what well may be "the conspicuous other" in his or her own voice. That doesn't mean there will be a universal acceptance of all the myriad forms of family presented - quite the contrary. I am certain that many readers may be shocked at some of the family structures presented, which is fine. We need not approve or agree with all the ways our fellow citizens choose to create family, but it is important to hear their voices in the description of those creations. All too often we hear of families, not from the families' members, but from others describing them. These second and third- hand descriptions lend themselves to inaccuracies. Could someone else, even a well-meaning someone else describe your family as well as you or one of the other members? Get a copy of One Big Happy Family and read first-hand accounts on the enormous diversity of families-written by those families' members; it's a "must read" and I'm certain you'll be fascinated!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So proud to be a part of this!, March 10, 2009

By	Dawn Friedman (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It is an honor to be part of this stellar collection with so many gifted, insightful writers! Rebecca has done a terrific job of painting a picture of how diverse love can be and how many, many ways there are of building happy, strong families. As a mom in a homeschooling, interfaith, open adoption, transracial family, this book really speaks to my experiences!