num_pages: 288
description: An illuminating entertaining and provocative immersion in todays American family with essays from ZZ Packer Dan Savage Min Jin Lee asha bandele Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez and others illustrating the changing realities of domestic life. Edited by bestselling author Rebecca Walker this anthology invites us to step into the center of a range of different domestic arrangements and take a good look around. From gay adoption to absentee fathers from open marriages to green-card marriages the reality of the American household has altered dramatically over the last three decades. With changing values and expectations fluid gender roles and a shifting economy along with increase in infertility adoption and the incidence of mixed-race couples people across the country are redefining the standard arrangement of family life. In a collection of eighteen honest personal and deeply affecting essays from an array of writers One Big Happy Family offers a fresh look at how contemporary families are adapting to this altering reality. Each writing from the perspective of his or her own unique domestic arrangements and priorities the authors of these essays explore topics like transracial adoption bicultural marriage and children cohousing equal parenting and the creation of virtual families. Dan Savage writes about the unexpected responsibilities of open adoption. Jenny Block tells of the pros and cons of her own open marriage. ZZ Packer explores the ramifications of and her own self-consciousness about having a mixed-race child. asha bandele writes of her decision to have a child with a man in prison for life. And Min Jin Lee points to the intimacy shared by a mother and her childs hired caregiver. All of these pieces smartly discuss the various cultural pressures issues and realities for families today in a manner that is inviting and accessiblesometimes humorous sometimes moving sometimes shocking but always fascinating.
language: English
title: One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love
publisher: Riverhead Hardcover