A Family by Any Other Name

Book excerpt: Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for best LGBT Anthology Winner of a 2015 Silver Independent Publisher Book Award At no other time in history have lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) relationships and families been more visible or numerous. A Family by Any Other Name recognizes and celebrates this advance by exploring what “family” means to people today. The anthology includes a wide range of perspectives on queer relationships and families—there are stories on coming out, same-sex marriage, adopting, having biological kids, polyamorous relationships, families without kids, divorce, and dealing with the death of a spouse, as well as essays by straight writers about having a gay parent or child. These personal essays are by turns funny, provocative, and intelligent, but all are moving and honest. Including writers from across North America, this collection offers honest and moving real-life stories about relationships and creating families in the twenty-first century. The fifth book in a series of books about the twenty-first-century family, A Family by Any Other Name follows How to Expect What You’re Not Expecting, Somebody’s Child, Nobody’s Mother, and Nobody’s Father, all essay collections that challenge readers to re-examine traditional definitions of “family.”