Recommended Reading
Memoirs & Personal Stories
Alone in the Trenches
Author: Esera Tuaolo
This is Esera Tuaolo's own story of his nine years playing in the NFL, all the while living in terror that someone would expose his deepest secret: he is gay. He writes candidly about the inner world of the NFL, meeting his life partner Mitchell and finding strength in his Christian faith.
Assault of Laughter
Author: Melissa Hart
When Melissa's parents divorced, her abusive father was granted custody because Melissa's lesbian mother was declared unfit. Melissa's journey to define "home" and "family" begins, and readers question the current day rhetoric about "unfit" gay families.
Buying Dad
Author: Harlyn Aizley
Two Jewish girls want to start a family and decide that they can buy sperm online from California. Buying Dad is a humourous, edgy, first-person chronicle of a woman engaged in an alternative family-planning experience.
The Confession
Author: James McGreevey
In August 2004, New Jersey Governor McGreevey announced to the world that he was a gay man and a gay dad to his two daughters! This memoir sheds light on both his public and private life.
Confessions of the Other Mother: Nonbiological Lesbian Moms
Edited by Harlyn Aizley
A collection of personal stories - sometimes humorous, sometimes painful, but at all times celebratory - by eighteen women who are transforming our view of two-parent families.
Gay Couple's Journey Through Surrogacy: Intended Fathers
Author: Michael Menichiello
This memoir details one couple's hopeful quest for a child, providing a look into the available choices and problems they faced. The author traces his and his partner's challenges from their initial decision to find a surrogate on through the trials and tribulations of the entire pregnancy and birth.
Gay Dads
Author: David Strah
Gay Dads is a panoramic look at the first decades of an entirely new kind of family. Neither a personal memoir nor a clinical study, it is instead the spiritual survey of a trend, encompassing not just the hard data but the yearnings, the impediments, the strategies, the joys, the costs, and the benefits of becoming a parent.
The Kid: An Adoption Story
Author: Dan Savage
Sex columnist Dan Savage tells the often humorous story about how he and his boyfriend Terry adopted a son, illustrating some of the adoption process.
Out of the Ordinary: Essays on Growing Up With Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Parents
Authors: Noelle Howey (Ed.), Ellen Samuels (Ed.), Margarethe Cammermeyer, Dan Savage
20 essays from children of homosexual or gender-altering parents. While hearing "faggot" yelled at you in a high school corridor would upset almost anyone, here is evidence that hearing "Your father's a faggot" isn't nearly as bad, and that you might find yourself levelheadedly retorting, "No, my father's a transgendered lesbian."