Joanna Mizielińska's *Queer Kinship on the Edge? Families of Choice in Poland* offers a comprehensive look at queer families in Central and Eastern Europe, challenging Western-centric assumptions about queer kinship. The book uses a multi-method approach, including case studies and interviews, to explore diverse family structures and experiences. It examines themes of domesticity, care practices, family definitions, parenthood, and intergenerational relationships within the context of Polish society and its unique legal and social landscape. The research highlights the complexities of queer family life, emphasizing the interplay between chosen families and families of origin. The book ultimately contributes to a more nuanced understanding of queer kinship beyond the dominant Anglo-American perspectives.
This book, originally published in 1991 and revised to include a new preface, examines the ways in which lesbians and gays in San Francisco create their own 'chosen families' through friendships, community, and mutual support. It delves into the challenges faced by gay individuals, including rejection by biological families, legal discrimination, and the struggle for recognition and rights. The book discusses coming-out stories, the social construction of GLBT identity, and the evolution of gay families, highlighting the fluid and individualistic nature of these chosen kinship relations.
Queer Kinship on the Edge? Families of Choice in Poland (Routledge, 2024) explores ways in which queer families from Central and Eastern Europe complicate the mainstream picture of queer kinship and families researched in the Anglo-American contexts.
The book presents findings from under-represented localities as a starting point to query some of the expectations about queer kinship and to provide insights on the scale and nature of queer kinship in diverse geopolitical locations and the complexities of lived experiences of queer families. Drawing on a rich qualitative multi-method study to address the gap in queer kinship studies which tend to exclude Polish or wider Central and Eastern perspectives, it offers a multi-dimensional picture of ‘families of choice’ improving sensitivity towards differences in queer kinship studies. Through case studies and interviews with diverse members of queer families (i.e., queer parents, their children) and their families of origin (parents and siblings), the book looks at queer domesticity, practices of care, defining and displaying families, queer parenthood familial homophobia, and interpersonal relationships through the life course.
Joanna Mizielińska is associate professor at Collegium Civitas in Poland.
Qing Shen recently received his PhD in anthropology from Uppsala University.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
New Books in Sociology 
