Tamara Lea Spira, an Associate Professor of Queer Studies, discusses her book on queer families and reproductive justice. She explores the evolution of queer family structures and critiques the increasing normativity within LGBTQ+ movements. With a focus on historical and contemporary reproductive justice, Spira emphasizes the importance of community care, solidarity, and alternative family dynamics. She also highlights the challenges faced by queer families and advocates for hope and transformative futures, urging society to embrace diverse kinship amidst ongoing social and environmental crises.
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Writing Amid Personal and Political Struggles
Tamara wrote the book during 2016 with a medically fragile infant, amid harsh political realities like family separations at the border.
Her personal exhaustion fueled a deeper engagement with queer family struggles and global child injustices.
insights INSIGHT
Erotic as Life Force and Resistance
The erotic is a life force animating everything beyond narrow sexual meanings, inspiring world-building and resistance.
Revisiting Audre Lorde’s distinction, the erotic fuels imagination, joy, and political transformation in queer reproductive justice.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Poetry and Memory as Archive
Tamara curates her queer family archive through poetry, memoirs, court cases, and activism reflecting lived radical love beyond institutions.
Poetry especially reveals the intertwined political and emotional histories often missing from dominant archives.
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Queering Families, Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times
Queering Families, Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times
Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times
Tamara Lea Spira
Tamara Lea Spira's "Queering Families" examines the evolving understanding of queer family from the late 20th century to the present. It critiques the assimilation of some LGBTQ+ individuals into mainstream family structures, highlighting their involvement in US imperialism and colonialism. The book celebrates the history of queer reproductive justice activism, emphasizing the contributions of Black, decolonial, and queer of color feminists. Spira advocates for building communities of care that support those marginalized by societal norms. Ultimately, the book calls for a future where all beings are cherished and valued.
Doing Gender Justice
Queering Reproduction, Kin, and Care
Shui-yin Sharon Yam
Envisioning queer futures where we lovingly wager everything for the world's children, the planet, and all living beings against all odds, and in increasingly precarious times. Tamara Lea Spira's Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times (U California Press, 2025) traces the shifting dominant meanings of queer family from the late twentieth century to today. With this book, Spira highlights the growing embrace of normative family structures by LGBTQ+ movements--calling into question how many queers, once deemed unfit to parent, have become contradictory agents within the US empire's racial and colonial agendas. Simultaneously, Queering Families celebrates the rich history of queer reproductive justice, from the radical movements of the 1970s through the present, led by Black, decolonial, and queer of color feminist activists. Ultimately, Spira argues that queering reproductive justice impels us to build communities of care to cherish and uphold the lives of those who, defying normativity's violent stranglehold, are deemed to be unworthy of life. She issues the call to lovingly wager a future for the world's children, the planet, and all living beings against all odds, and in increasingly perilous times.
New Books in Critical Theory 
