Modern Families
Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship
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Narrated by:
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James Patrick Cronin
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By:
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Joshua Gamson
About this listen
The kinds of families we see today are different than they were even a decade ago, some fantastically so, as paths to parenthood have been rejiggered by technology, activism, and law.
In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. We meet a child with two mothers, made with one mother's egg and the sperm of a man none of them has ever met and carried by the other mother; another born to a man and a woman in Ethiopia, delivered by his natural grandmother to an orphanage after both his parents died in close succession, and then to the arms of his mother, who is raising him solo. We hear the story of a girl with two dads, conceived with one father's sperm and eggs donated by a friend and carried to term in the womb of another close friend who becomes their surrogate; and of two girls, one born in Nepal and the other in India, legally adopted by a woman who is co-parenting them with her girlfriend and a gay male couple.
These are not your grandparents' creation stories. These tales are deeply personal but also unavoidably political. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made. In these stories, family creation was painstaking and sometimes difficult. Often, parts of biological reproduction took place in a different body than that of the parents raising the child; sometimes, the model of kinship was made up virtually from scratch, often in tension with legally and socially sanctioned versions of family.
Becoming parents involved jumping tremendous hurdles - social conventions, legal and medical institutions - with heightened intention and inventiveness, within and across multiple inequities and privileges. It's a bumpy and potholed landscape, as institutional change lags behind the creativity of everyday living, as breaches of family norms remain controversial, and as inequalities haunt the most intensely loving acts. Yet each of these families, however they came to be, shares the same universal joys that all families share. Mapping the large, complex terrain of the modern kinship, Modern Families presents a personal, intimate account of social change from the inside out.
©2015 New York University (P)2016 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Since her time on Saturday Night Live, where she created the infamous androgynous character "Pat", Julia Sweeney has gone on to establish herself as a witty, captivating performer of one-woman shows, like God Said Ha!, In the Family Way, and Letting Go of God. She gave a TED talk sharing how she explained the birds and the bees to her eight-year-old daughter, Mulan, which ignited an incredible response. Now, when it comes to talking about motherhood, people want to hear what Julia has to say.
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I Love Julia Sweeney
- By Lisa on 04-05-13
By: Julia Sweeney
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Transitions of the Heart
- Stories of Love, Struggle and Acceptance by Mothers of Transgender and Gender Variant Children
- By: Rachel Pepper - editor
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Transitions of the Heart is the first collection to ever invite mothers of transgender and gender variant children of all ages to tell their own stories about their child’s gender transition. Often transitioning socially and emotionally alongside their child but rarely given a voice in the experience, mothers hold the key to familial and societal understanding of gender difference.
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Heartfelt, Well-Written, and Moving
- By Susie on 01-04-13
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Americanized
- Rebel Without a Green Card
- By: Sara Saedi
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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At 13, bright-eyed straight-A student Sara Saedi uncovered a terrible family secret: She was breaking the law simply by living in the United States. Only two years old when her parents fled Iran, she didn't learn of her undocumented status until her older sister wanted to apply for an after-school job but couldn't because she didn't have a Social Security number. Fear of deportation kept Sara up at night, but it didn't keep her from being a teenager.
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Corny Cheesy
- By Mina00 on 09-06-18
By: Sara Saedi
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Love, InshAllah
- The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women
- By: Ayesha Mattu, Nura Maznavi
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq, Piper Goodeve, Lauren Fortgang, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Romance, dating, sex and - Muslim women? In this groundbreaking collection, 25 American Muslim writers sweep aside stereotypes to share their search for love openly for the first time, showing just how varied the search for love can be - from singles' events and online dating, to college flirtations and arranged marriages, all with a uniquely Muslim twist. These compelling stories of love and romance create an irresistible balance of heart-warming and tantalizing, always revealing and deeply relatable.
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Sex, Love, & Feminism, in the Muslim Women's World
- By Susie on 03-06-13
By: Ayesha Mattu, and others
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To the End of June
- The Intimate Life of American Foster Care
- By: Cris Beam
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Who are the children of foster care? What, as a country, do we owe them? Cris Beam, a foster mother herself, spent five years immersed in the world of foster care looking into these questions and tracing firsthand stories. The result is To the End of June, an unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children in their search for a stable, loving family. Beam shows us the intricacies of growing up in the system - the back-and-forth with agencies, the rootless shuffling between homes, the emotionally charged tug between foster and birth parents.
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Good dissertation
- By Nim on 03-13-19
By: Cris Beam
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Separated @ Birth
- A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited
- By: Anais Bordier, Samantha Futerman
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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It all began when design student Anaïs Bordier viewed a YouTube video and saw her own face staring back. After some research, Anaïs found that the Los Angeles actress Samantha Futerman was born in a South Korean port city called Busan on November 19, 1987 - the exact same location and day that Anaïs was born. This propelled her to make contact - via Facebook. One message later, both girls wondered: Could they be twins?
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Touching, heartwarming
- By Kelvin L. Reed on 11-01-22
By: Anais Bordier, and others
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Committed
- A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who'd been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government....
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Perfect timing
- By Nancy on 01-15-10
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My Two Moms
- Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family
- By: Zach Wahls, Bruce Littlefield
- Narrated by: Kris Koscheski
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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On January 31, 2011, Zach Wahls addressed the Iowa House Judiciary Committee in a public forum regarding civil unions. The 19-year-old son of a same-sex couple, Wahls proudly proclaimed, "The sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character." Hours later, his speech was posted on YouTube, where it went viral, quickly receiving more than two million views. By the end of the week, everyone knew his name and wanted to hear more from the boy with two moms.
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You will not regret listening to this.
- By V. Brown on 06-07-12
By: Zach Wahls, and others
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Shanda
- A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy
- By: Letty Cottin Pogrebin
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The word "shanda" is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. This book, Shanda, tells the story of three generations of complicated, intense twentieth-century Jews for whom the desire to fit in and the fear of public humiliation either drove their aspirations or crushed their spirit. In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercely-guarded lies and intricate cover-ups woven by dozens of members of her extended family.
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Beautifully Written!
- By Adele Aron Greenspun on 01-12-23
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Believing in Magic
- My Story of Love, Overcoming Adversity, and Keeping the Faith
- By: Cookie Johnson, Denene Millner
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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On November 7, 1991, basketball legend Magic Johnson stunned the world with the news that he was HIV-positive. For the millions who tuned in as he shared his news, Magic's revelation became a seminal moment for the nation. Now twenty-five years later, Cookie Johnson shares her story and the emotional journey that started on that day - from life as a pregnant and joyous newlywed to one filled with the fear that her husband would die, she and her baby would, too, be infected with the virus.
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Not the inspiration story
- By M. Mao on 07-06-17
By: Cookie Johnson, and others
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Instant Mom
- By: Nia Vardalos
- Narrated by: Nia Vardalos
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Some families are created in different ways but are still, in every way, a family. Writer and star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding Nia Vardalos firmly believed she was supposed to be a mom, but Mother Nature and modern medicine had put her in a headlock. So she made a choice that shocked friends, family, and even herself: with only 14 hours' notice, she adopted a preschooler.
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Witty and Heartfelt
- By Beth M. Honeycutt on 07-03-24
By: Nia Vardalos
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Mother Daughter Me
- A Memoir
- By: Katie Hafner
- Narrated by: Katie Hafner
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
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Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
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Inconceivable
- A Medical Mistake, the Baby We Couldn't Keep, and Our Choice to Deliver the Ultimate Gift
- By: Carolyn Savage, Sean Savage
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Danny Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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A medical mistake during an IVF procedure.An unthinkable situation....you're pregnant with the wrong baby. You can terminate, but you can't keep him. What choice would you make?
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"Misconception" and "Inconceivable"
- By Simone on 12-17-12
By: Carolyn Savage, and others