Staying Power
On Queerness, Inheritances, and the Families We Choose
Checking Availibility...Description
A remarkably frank memoir about interdependence, grieving, and parenting as a queer femme that doesn't leave out the messy or the erotic
Staying Power, Zena Sharman's memoir in essays, is a beautiful and honest journey of care work, grief, parenting, and chosen family in the wake of intergenerational trauma. Exploring the lessons and inheritances of being raised by survivors of complex traumas, the book challenges the notion that one must be healed in order to parent well and celebrates the transformative power of queer family-making beyond gay marriage and assimilation into the nuclear family.
The book, which recounts the author's experiences of raising three children in a four-parent queer family, asks, "If leaving has helped you survive, how do you learn to stay?" Sharman finds answers in queer kinship, femme erotics, leatherdyke lineages, and the radical possibilities inherent in doing motherwork outside of motherhood, recognizing that sometimes you fight the thing you want most.
Staying Power is a moving, deeply personal account of one person's journey of unlearning independence through an experiment in queer collective care.
About this Author
Reviews
As innovative in form as it is in content, Staying Power is an intricately constructed memoir in essays that pushes against the familiar contours of life-writing, just as the queer communities at its heart push against the familiar contours of family-making. Sharman's writing is tender, filthy, and brilliant, never shying away from the hard truths of grief and trauma while always orienting us back to the world-making possibilities of queer love. This book is a portal; prepare to be transformed. -Hannah McGregor, author of Clever Girl: Jurassic Park and A Sentimental Education
If the product is in stock at the store nearest you, we suggest you call ahead to have it set aside for you, or you may place an order online and choose in-store pickup.
