In honor of mothers today, here are a baker’s dozen of memoirs by and about lesbian moms. They are not just for lesbian or LGBT audiences, however, but shed light on many of the universal challenges and blessings of motherhood.
I post this list with the acknowledgement that it is not very racially and ethnically diverse. I wish it were otherwise, but I am unaware of any current books that would fill this gap. If you do, please leave a comment! We are a diverse community, and these books only show some of our many stories.
First, ten by the moms themselves:
- Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Identity
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- Love Song For Baby X: How I Stayed (Almost) Sane on the Rocky Road to Parenthood
, by Cheryl Dumesnil. A poetic memoir of struggling with infertility, set against the backdrop of California’s Prop 8 debate.
- American Family: Things Racial
, by Stacy Cusulos and Barbara Waugh. A wrenching, must-read memoir of the two White women’s adoption and raising of their Black daughter and son from infancy to adulthood, and a hard look at the very personal effects of systemic racism and homophobia in our country today.
Buying Dad: One Woman’s Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor
- My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy
, by Andrea Askowitz. Another hilarious, if cantankerous, journey to parenthood as a single mom.
- She Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood
, by Amie Klempnauer Miller. A warm, honest, and touching account of one couple’s journey from deciding to become parents through the first year of motherhood, from the perspective of the nonbiological mom.
- Times Two: Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made
, by Sarah Kate Ellis and Kristen Henderson. In this memoir of simultaneous pregnancies, both moms tell their intertwining tale of coming out, falling in love, and starting a family.
- Waiting for the Call: From Preacher’s Daughter to Lesbian Mom, by Jacqueline Taylor. One of the few memoirs about adoptive lesbian moms (they adopt two girls from Peru), this is also an insightful, compassionate story about coming out, motherhood, and faith.
- The Brides of March: Memoir of a Same-Sex Marriage, by Beren DeMotier. A raucous, touching look at the brief legalization of same-sex marriage in Multnomah County, Oregon, in March 2004, and its impact on her and her family.
- Pregnant Butch, by A.K. Summers. This comic/graphic tale, available free at comic collective site Act-i-vate, is a funny, bawdy, semi-autobiographical (and occasionally NSFW) look at “a butch dyke enduring that most deeply feminizing of processes—pregnancy.”
Finally, three by adult children of lesbian parents:
Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood, by Melissa Hart. A memoir of growing up separated from her mother, who lost custody of her children after she came out as a lesbian.
- My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family
, by Zach Wahls. The civil rights activist and YouTube sensation’s “response to all those who say I am ‘different’” because of having two moms.
- Family Outing: What Happened When I Found Out My Mother Was Gay
, by Troy Johnson. A scathing, funny, ribald case study in what can go wrong when honesty and openness are missing in a parent-child relationship, by a man whose mother was outed to him by her ex-girlfriend when he was 10 years old.
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