After sharing my love for Rebecca Walker's work with a few internet friends - and the desperate need to get a hold of the One Big Happy Family anthology, the great Jen Disgrasian quickly came to my rescue. Within a week, this beautiful book (plus a note written on enviable personalized stationery) had reached my mailbox. For that, I am eternally grateful to this fabulous woman.
The anthology contains 18 well-written essays about different family constellations, among them mixed marriages, polyamory, single parenthood, open adoption, househusbandry, sperm donation... Marc and Amy Vachon's story Half the Work, All the Fun on equally shared parenting and Sasha Hom's beautiful account of a home birth in Unassisted especially got to me. As did Neal Pollack's Home Alone Together:
"Why don't you do the fucking dishes?"
"Why don't you do the fucking dishes?"
"Because I don't fucking want to, that's why. So can you tell me why the kitchen floor is such a mess?"
"I don't know. Why don't you fucking clean it?"
It's sometimes hilarious, too.
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Read Rebecca Walker's foreword here and Unassisted by Sasha Hom here.
