One Big Happy Family

November 10, 2008
These plainspoken, cage-rattling essays, collected by Walker (What Makes a Man
), address how dramatically the traditional nuclear American family has changed. Jenny Block’s “And Then We Were Poly” sets the decidedly unconventional tone by insisting that her and her husband’s embrace of other sexual partners allows them a more joyful, fulfilling commitment to each other. A gay couple adopts the child of a self-destructive street girl in Dan Savage’s “DJ’s Homeless Mommy,” then tries to keep the mother in touch with her son. In “Sharing Madison,” Dawn Friedman, another parent of an adoptee, writes of her agonizing process of overcoming the guilt she feels in having taken baby Madison away from her teenage mother. Antonio Caya, in “Daddy Donoring,” recounts his rational decision to sire his friend’s child, firmly remaining a donor, not a daddy, so as not to “muddle the issue.” Children of mixed race force a much-needed altering of people’s perceptions, as ZZ Packer explores in “The Look,” while Susan McKinney de Ortega’s choice to marry a much younger Mexican man and make a home in Mexico challenges the American notion of middle-class values. These fresh, diverse views represent an authentic, valuable new reality.