1st Edition

Dangerous Families Queer Writing on Surviving

By Matt Bernstein Sycamore Copyright 2004
    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    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 abuse.

    • Acknowledgments
    • Dangerous Families: An Introduction
    • LANGUAGE
    • gonna get my girl body back: this is a work in progress
    • Johnny
    • Not with the Buckle End of the Belt
    • Dog Dreams
    • Body of Knowledge
    • Dyslexic Process
    • population 1200
    • the doctor’s daughter
    • Pelt
    • MONSTERS
    • Hate May Not Be a Family Value, but Dysfunction? That’s a Different Story
    • Descent into Hell
    • Kid Pirate in Suburbia
    • Some Notes on Art and Architecture
    • This Blood (Beaten Out of Me)
    • Contaminated
    • Drinking
    • Did I Mention That
    • My Sister’s Shadow
    • Flooding
    • ESCAPE
    • Escape: A Myth
    • Weapons
    • S.O.S.
    • Walls
    • Confessions of a Ghetto Princess
    • Those Who Can’t Do, Write, or Daddy’s Little Pornographer
    • Absence
    • Someday
    • Bad Girl
    • The Prime of My Life
    • About the Editor
    • Contributors

    Biography

    Sycamore, Matt Bernstein