Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood Among Black Women

Front Cover
University of California Press, Jul 30, 2011 - Social Science - 298 pages
"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
 

Contents

Black Women
21
Gender Presentation in Black Lesbian Communities
65
SelfUnderstandings
92
Lesbian Motherhood and Discourses of Respectability
113
Family Life and Gendered Relations between Women
153
Openly Gay Families and the Negotiation of Black
180
Intersections Extensions and Implications
215
A Roadmap for the Study of Marginalized
223
Selected Questions from Invisible
239
Questions from InDepth Interview
249
References
269
Index
289
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2011)

Mignon R. Moore is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.