Home > Media > Books > Gigi Kaeser and Peggy Gillespie - Love Makes a Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Parents and Their Families
Gigi Kaeser and Peggy Gillespie - Love Makes a Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Parents and Their Families
jps246's Full Review: Gigi Kaeser and Peggy Gillespie - Love Makes a Fam...
A honest and intimate look into the lives of gay and lesbian families, Love Makes a Family is an excellent introduction to why love is the bond in a family, not the sex of the parents.
I’ve seen plenty of gay and lesbian “family books” over the years and to me, Love Makes a Family is one of the most powerful books out there in that it really shows what gay and lesbian families are all about.
Not a political discourse on why equal rights are important, not a call for the legalization of gay marriage, Love Makes a Family is simply an introduction to the lives of gay and lesbian families.
Now some may argue based on faith or moral beliefs that a family that isn’t a Mom and a Dad just isn’t a family, but Love makes a Family makes a valiant (and I believe successful) attempt to show people that it does not just take a man and a woman to make a family, what it really just takes are two people who love one another completely and who love their children unconditionally. What I think is amazing is that Love Makes a Family explains and illustrates this fact without preaching, without even mentioning issues like equal rights or gay marriage. Love Makes a Family makes the point simply through fantastic photography and biographic writing as each family is profiled in the book.
Book Details
Edited by Peggy Gillespie and coming in at 280 pages, Love Makes a Family is setup without chapters and is instead organized by a review of each family (which I guess could be considered chapters). For each family, you have one large photo of the family, a short biography and story about the family, which might include how the partners met, how they had children, or maybe a story about some sort of adversity the family has had to go through, with a few more smaller pictures of the family scattered throughout the text. The stories and biographies are all engaging and interesting and make you better able to relate with that individual family. The most touching stories often deal with how the two partners came to have a child, with many families having adopted a special needs child that no one else seemed to want, and nurturing that child so they could enjoy a rich and full family life.
Honestly, a few of the stories managed to tear me up at times and everyone complains I never cry.
Designed as more of "coffee table" book (one you leave out on your coffee table to look through and flip through when they are sitting down). It is a bit oversized (just a few inches larger than a standard 8 ½ by 11 piece of paper) and the print and paper quality is high. Photographs are in black and white and color and often take up a full page. The text is well written and easy to read and follow.
Should you want to just sit down and read Love Makes a Family, there is more than enough text in this book makes for good reading. However, if you are not in the reading mood, there are more than enough pictures to make the book an enjoyable "flip through" book. I would however, take the time and read the stories, because what they do is make the people in the pictures even more human and real than the pictures already make them out to be.
The general set up of the book is nice because you can pick it up, flip through, find a picture that grabs you and read the story behind the picture. You aren't forced to read through the entire book. Each picture and each story are self-contained and are a full portrait of the life of the family being profiled.
Some Overview and Background
Way back when I was the President of the Gay-Straight Alliance at my college, we had the Love Makes a Family exhibit come to our college. This exhibit included all of the photos from the book, along with some additional photos and text and several speakers who we scheduled throughout the week that the exhibit was being shown.
The main portion of the exhibit was located in a series of display cases right at the main entrance to the college. EVERYONE stopped and looked it, from people who were gay and lesbian to the little old grandmothers who were visiting the college for other reasons. The display brought out discussions and I would say that a good number of the visitors left with a deeper understanding of what it takes to make a family and this was in the heart of conservative northeastern Vermont.
Throughout the week that the exhibit was up, the Gay-Straight Alliance also had the book available for purchase and I was surprised at how many copies we were able to sell (and that was good because it helped cut down on the cost of the exhibit to us).
I cannot stress enough, whether you are gay or lesbian, or just a straight ally, how strongly this book can help to shape people's opinions on gay and lesbian families. I honestly think that having this exhibit tour our college and community and several other communities throughout Vermont, helped to bring about the passage of the Civil Union law the following year. When some people realize how much love there is in a gay or lesbian family, and the fact that gay people are just like everyone else when it comes to a family, that they start to drop their preconceptions.
Get this book today and if you can, see the exhibit, which has many more families than the book has. In general, the exhibit version of the book is shown at various colleges and also usually in cultural centers during Pride events.
So…
If you are gay or lesbian, this book will hit home for you. The photos and stories of gay and lesbian families are uplifting and reaffirming for all LGBT people. It makes us hope that someday, a gay or lesbian family will be just like any other one and we will not need to continue to have to explain why we want to have a family to everyone else.
For straight people, I hope that Love Makes a Family helps for you to understand how much love there is between a committed gay or lesbian couple and how that love is really what is important when it comes to making a family.
Regardless of the current debate on gay marriage, gays and lesbians are building families everyday that are just as strong and just as real as their heterosexual counterparts. I’m glad that there are books out there like Love Makes a Family that help to showcase that fact.
I originally wrote this review back in September of 2002 – Then I rewrote it in early December of 2003 and finally I just pretty much started over in January of 2004. I never liked the way the review was setup and I think in general, I’ve now hit on the high points of the book and gotten my point across on why I think it’s important. For anyone who has read the original and the 1st rewrite, thanks for taking the time to read the complete rewrite
The textbook, Love Makes a Family : Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Parents and Their Families, by Peggy Gillespie and Gigi Kaes...More at Textbooks.com
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