Choosing Family
Francesca T. Royster
A brilliant literary memoir of chosen family and chosen heritage, told against the backdrop of Chicago’s North and South Sides.
As a multiracial household in Chicago’s North Side community of Rogers Park, race is at the core of Francesca T. Royster and her family's world, influencing everyday acts of parenting and the conception of what family truly means. Like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, this lyrical and affecting memoir focuses on a unit of three: the author; her wife Annie, who's white; and Cecilia, the Black daughter they adopt as a couple in their forties and fifties. Choosing Family chronicles this journey to motherhood while examining the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a Black, queer, and feminist perspective. Royster also explores her memories of the matriarchs of her childhood and the homes these women created in Chicago’s South Side—itself a dynamic character in the memoir—where “family” was fluid, inclusive, and not necessarily defined by marriage or other socially recognized contracts.
Calling upon the work of some of her favorite queer thinkers, including José Esteban Muñoz and Audre Lorde, Royster interweaves her experiences and memories with queer and gender theory to argue that many Black families, certainly her own, have historically had a “queer” attitude toward family: configurations that sit outside the white normative experience and are the richer for their flexibility and generosity of spirit. A powerful, genre-bending memoir of family, identity, and acceptance, Choosing Family, ultimately, is about joy—about claiming the joy that society did not intend to assign to you, or to those like you.
Duration - 21h 35m.
Author - Francesca T. Royster.
Narrator - Sarah Palmero.
Published Date - Saturday, 07 January 2023.
Copyright - © 2022 Francesca T. Royster ©.
Location:
United States
Description:
A brilliant literary memoir of chosen family and chosen heritage, told against the backdrop of Chicago’s North and South Sides. As a multiracial household in Chicago’s North Side community of Rogers Park, race is at the core of Francesca T. Royster and her family's world, influencing everyday acts of parenting and the conception of what family truly means. Like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, this lyrical and affecting memoir focuses on a unit of three: the author; her wife Annie, who's white; and Cecilia, the Black daughter they adopt as a couple in their forties and fifties. Choosing Family chronicles this journey to motherhood while examining the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a Black, queer, and feminist perspective. Royster also explores her memories of the matriarchs of her childhood and the homes these women created in Chicago’s South Side—itself a dynamic character in the memoir—where “family” was fluid, inclusive, and not necessarily defined by marriage or other socially recognized contracts. Calling upon the work of some of her favorite queer thinkers, including José Esteban Muñoz and Audre Lorde, Royster interweaves her experiences and memories with queer and gender theory to argue that many Black families, certainly her own, have historically had a “queer” attitude toward family: configurations that sit outside the white normative experience and are the richer for their flexibility and generosity of spirit. A powerful, genre-bending memoir of family, identity, and acceptance, Choosing Family, ultimately, is about joy—about claiming the joy that society did not intend to assign to you, or to those like you. Duration - 21h 35m. Author - Francesca T. Royster. Narrator - Sarah Palmero. Published Date - Saturday, 07 January 2023. Copyright - © 2022 Francesca T. Royster ©.
Language:
English
Opening Credits
Duration:00:00:15
PREFACE: LOOKING FOR SIGNS - APRIL 2012
Duration:00:13:48
PART I Blueprints for a Queer Family 1: EVOCATION—A GATHERING OF MOTHERS
Duration:00:39:58
2: QUEER ROOTS—WHEN THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
Duration:00:05:24
3: BECOMING US—OUR FIRST NINE YEARS
Duration:00:31:02
4: CHANGING MY MIND—RETHINKING MARRIAGE
Duration:00:22:55
5: THE LITTLE HOUSE—MAKING A HOME WITH QUEER JOY
Duration:00:13:04
6: ADOPTION—AND THE ARITHMETIC OF LOSS AND GAIN
Duration:00:33:43
7: THE BACKYARD—OUR LAST SUMMER BEFORE, 2011
Duration:00:06:49
8: DOING THE LIMBO—THE WINTER BEFORE, 2012
Duration:00:12:54
9: AND NOW WE ARE THREE—SPRING 2012
Duration:00:07:50
PART II The Three of Us and More 10: BINGE-WATCHING CECE—SPRING INTO SUMMER, 2012
Duration:00:15:30
11: SNAPSHOT—SUMMER 2012
Duration:00:05:21
12: MOM, SINCE I SAW YOU LAST—FALL 2012
Duration:00:34:03
13: WE’RE GETTING MARRIED—JUNE 2014
Duration:00:02:49
14: CECE’S BODY—FALL INTO WINTER 2014
Duration:00:12:58
15: SISTER-COUSINS—SUMMER INTO FALL 2015
Duration:00:12:00
16: RESETTING THE TABLE—AUGUST 2015
Duration:00:04:02
PART III Girl Meets World—Summer 2016 17: WE ALSO BELONG TO THE WORLD—SUMMER 2016
Duration:00:02:56
18: STORIES WE TELL AFTER ORLANDO—JUNE 2016
Duration:00:17:54
19: TO MY LOVE—JULY 2016
Duration:00:04:19
20: BLACK LIVES MATTER AT HOME—AUGUST 2016
Duration:00:14:52
PART IV Cece’s Journey—Dreaming the Future 21: TIMELINE: AGE FIVE—SUMMER 2017
Duration:00:05:27
22: A TOY STORY—SEPTEMBER 2017
Duration:00:09:32
23: MAKE IT FUNKY, MOM—NOVEMBER 201
Duration:00:03:05
24: THE BABY STORE—JANUARY 2018
Duration:00:23:05
PART V: Reckonings—All You Change Changes You 25: WHEN TROUBLE CALLS—FEBRUARY 2018
Duration:00:39:17
26: TRACING TIME: SEVEN TATTOOS—SUMMER 2018
Duration:00:23:39
27: KISSING DOESN’T KILL - AND OTHER QUEER LESSIONS I LEARNED FROM MY MOTHER
Duration:00:22:10
CODA: STONE SOUP LOVE, WITH ANN RUSSO
Duration:00:12:04
Closing Credits
Duration:00:00:35