The Purpose: We hope to address a lack in self-produced narratives about kids of queer families. A lot of the video, book and audio documentary about us is produced by people who are not themselves kids of LGBTQ families. Often, they focus on questions like: What’s it like at school? Are you gay too? Queerspawn Diaries offers an alternative to this perspective. It also broadens the relevant issues: sexuality and school are not the only arenas in which queer family affects identity or experience. What about education, culture, religion, friendship networks, activism and work?

Queerspawn Diaries aims to put out into public U.S. discourse new stories about what family is made of. We are at a particular historical moment, given public policy debates about gay marriage and civil unions, when it is absolutely critical that queer communities raise our voices and our questions about the meaning of family, marriage, citizenship and queerness. Queerspawn Diairies contributes to that conversation by saying loudly and clearly: before and after presidential proclamations about who is allowed to be family and what the state will sanction, there are all kinds of queer families. It is not up to the state to decide who we are and how LGBTQ family affects us: it is up to us to take the lead in that conversation.

The People: Queerspawn Diaries co-directors Nava and Chana grew up a few blocks from each other for some of our childhood and the next bunk over for many of our summers. With rabbi dads and lesbian moms, we found we had some things in common. When we were thirteen, Nava came out to Chana about her mom on a bench at summer camp. Chana never came out the Nava about hers -- but Nava somehow figured it out, and when she did we started talking about our families.

Our conversations have taken a new turn recently. We are finding words for what our families have meant for our larger experience in the world. We've started asking the questions that never got asked of us - not whether we turned out straight, bent or got beat up in school but what defines us as queerspawn. What do we think about what makes family? What does that have to do with our communities of choice, our perspectives on education, culture, religion, friendship networks, activism, and work?

Thank you to Mountain Meadow! Queerspawn Diaries' fiscal sponsor, Mountain Meadow, provides Queerspawn Diaries with 501(c)3 status and does its own programming for youth from LGBTQ families. Check them out at www.mountainmeadow.org.

Thank you to the Oberlin College LGBT Faculty Committee! Queerspawn Diaries is supported in part by its Andy Cemelli Research Grant.