Conversaciones: Relatos De Padres y Madres De Hijas Lesbianas e Hijos Gay (Talking with Parents of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) [Paperback]

I knew something important happened when my mother saw the film "The Wedding Banquet." She saw a family of color dealing with a gay family member and she saw how the Chinese mother looked silly being so devestated by her son's sexual orientation. This book works in a similar way. This was the first book I've ever read that was entirely in Spanish. The editor had an article in "Companeras", a Latina lesbian anthology, where the editor there said she reprinted whole Spanish dialogues in order to preserve the truth of people's words. Like that editor and others (such as Anzaldua and Moraga), I think Romo-Carmona wanted to be true to the contributors. This is a slim book and the essays are quite short, but as someone who learned Spanish in the classroom, it took me a while to read. It's amazing too that this family-oriented book came from the lesbian sex-positive/radical Clies Press. Like Anglo PFLAG materials, this book began and ended with the parents of famous Latino gays (authors, elected officials, ppl who have been on TV) writing. Almost every author is supportive of their gay child and every submission ends with them saying "I would never kick my child out of the house." The last contributor, noted author Jaime Manrique, even registers his shock about how supportive the parents are here. So this book is positive, rather than normative. The authors are quite diverse in terms of ethnicity/nationality. The book is somewhat scant on bisexual and transgendered issues, but they are covered at least. In many articles, the parents write and then their gay children add in: this gets very repetitive. Probably due to the author's gender, this book is heavily lesbian and woman-slanted (even more mothers write than fathers). That's cool because it fights lesbian invisibility, but we still need to recognize the burden that gay Latino MEN carry. One contributor says straight up that it's okay for her daughter to be gay, but that would not be acceptable for her son. There are many great entries from parents whose gay sons have died of AIDS. Some articles feature gay parents who discover their children are gay. Nevertheless, abuse, alcoholism, custody battles, and other family tragedies do come up often in this book. A big critique that I have of this book is that racism in the US and the US gay community is hardly brought up. For example, many of the gay Latino children seem to have non-Latino partners (including the editor) and the parents never discuss it. Still, I loved this text and want every Spanish-speaking parent of a gay child to read it. My parents never even considered going to a PFLAG meeting until they heard that a black chapter was being formed. If straight people only feel comfortable discussing gay family in race-similar environments, then we just have to deal with that reality.

This is a really great book, with a great subject matter... My only complaint is that there are a lot of typos in this book.. Many words are misspelled, and accents are used spontaneously.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  3.5 out of 5 stars