Download Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women epub

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 is a remarkable book that shines with affirmation and solid research.