Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Queer survivors piece together the clues to discover their own lives! Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving goes beyond the recovery narrative to create a new queer literature of investigation, exploration, and transformation. Twenty-six stories illuminate the reality of growing up in fear, struggling to rebuild lives damaged by sexual, physical, and/or emotional abuse. The book explores how abuse turns queer survivors-male, female, and transgendered-into healers, heartbreakers, and homicidal maniacs, presenting brilliant stories that sear and soar. Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving addresses all forms of abuse head-on, representing a cross-section of queer survivors in terms of race, class, ethnicity, education, origin, sexuality, and gender. Contributors use their own life experiences to create a book that takes back control from well-meaning "outsiders," as they recount the daily struggle to overcome the damage done to their minds, bodies, and spirits in a world that denies their gender, sexual, and social identities. From the editor: "Dangerous Families consists entirely of writing by survivors of childhood abuse. That's right-no therapists analyzing our plight, no talk-show hosts exploiting us-just survivors, exploring our complicated, frightening, and fulfilling lives. These stories dispense with the usual technique of carefully massaging the reader's fragile worldview before plunging this unsuspecting innocent into a world of horror. They go right to the horror, the beauty, and the joy, often throwing the reader off-guard, revealing layers of meaning before the reader can step back." Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving is an anthology of 26 true stories of growing up queer in families that magnify the horrors of the outside world instead of offering protection. The book is an essential read for therapists, caseworkers, cultural studies specialists, and anyone struggling to survive childhood

Genres: Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction, Essays, Anthologies

248 pages, Hardcover

First published February 26, 2004

About the author

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the award-winning author of The Freezer Door, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, one of Oprah Magazine’s Best LGBTQ Books of 2020, and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Winner of a Lambda Literary Award and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book, she’s the author of three novels and three nonfiction titles, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies, most recently Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis. Sycamore lives in Seattle, and her new book, Touching the Art, will be released on November 7, 2023.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was glad to be able to find this book at my school's library, as it unfortunately appears to be out of print (it goes for around $110 used). This is a solid collection of essays; much of the material included here is well-written, touching or heartbreaking (sometimes all of those!). This was a tough book to read at times. Regardless, this is a must-read for anyone who has come from a difficult background, or who wants to read some incredible work by queer survivors of abuse.