An introspective work that lays open the inner workings of lesbian parenthood while effectively demystifying parenthood in...
In this poignant debut memoir, Miller explores the meaning of motherhood, family and the “gayby” boom.
Rather than approaching the issue of gay and lesbian parenthood from a political angle, the author takes up the emotional and sociological aspects of nonbiological lesbian motherhood, providing a fresh, insightful perspective. After nearly 20 years of commitment, Miller and her partner decided to have a child. The obstacles and joys they faced—some expected, others unthinkable—provide the meat of the narrative. Miller attempted to get pregnant for two years, then handed the reins to her partner, who promptly got pregnant on the first artificial insemination. The first half of the book is dedicated to the process of impregnation and the pregnancy itself, with the author revealing her hopes, fears, insecurities and attempts to navigate her place in the future child’s life, neither as the biological mother nor as the father. Following the birth, Miller had to undertake the process of becoming an equal parent, both legally and emotionally. She faced many of the same problems as heterosexual couples—guilt over working, guilt over staying home, lack of sleep, etc.—and others particular to her situation as a lesbian: What should she say, if anything, when people assume she is the biological mother? Will her daughter’s preschool be tolerant of nontraditional families? Rather than providing abstract philosophical musings on such questions, Miller unveils deeply personal reflections on the meaning of parenthood in a rapidly changing society.
An introspective work that lays open the inner workings of lesbian parenthood while effectively demystifying parenthood in general.Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0469-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
