Patton-Imani's new book shares the personal accounts of many families headed by two women (including her own) from different races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic circumstances across different locations in the US, from 1991 until same-sex marriage was legalized federally in 2015. Alongside these rich stories, this book offers a critical analysis of numerous broad-ranging discourses, such as law and policies, the legal rhetoric of advocacy within and outside the courtroom, and news media, all of which have historically shaped these families under the shadow of inequality, compared with heteronormative families—and continue to do so. Patton-Imani's capacity to read against the grain of the personal stories and between the large narratives is precious. Such an approach, which the author terms an “allegorical reading” (p. 58), is infused with a range of theories like critical race, feminism, and queer critique of color, to expose how different cross-cutting social hierarchies operate on interwoven scales, in both the lived experiences of these families and in broad-ranging discourses, while successfully obscuring their presence. Though these stories and discourses are situated in the context of the US, the tensions they bring to the surface pertain to universal themes that transcend geographical boundaries—among them, the constantly-shifting meanings of legitimate family, citizenship, and belonging, and what intersectional social justice might look like.
One of the main strengths of Patton-Imani's book lies in making visible the cracks in the premise of American citizenship, demonstrating how it has been shaped by a range of social forces, such as race, class, gender, and sexuality. The book's focus on adoption, which runs through the stories of all the families in the book, is used to pursue this proposition. Patton-Imani elucidates the financial, legal, and emotional burdens involved in achieving the legal family protections (what she terms “the extra thing”) to which the families she narrates are entitled. Yet, in the social context of inequality, many of these women, mostly African American, Latina, and Native American—like Rae and Jasmine (Chapter 1) or Betty and Edna (Chapter 6)—simply cannot afford such burdens, leaving them vulnerable, legally and financially. Indeed, this is an alarming paradox, as Patton-Imani declares: “No one should have to buy protections that are accorded by law to other citizens” (p. 55). In so doing, her analysis calls to mind other important works that contend that the legal discourse of equality exacerbates, rather than helps dismantle, material inequality, leaving the most marginalized people behind (Reference Robert and LeckeyRobert, 2015; Reference SpadeSpade, 2015).
The cracks in American citizenship also become apparent when Patton-Imani shares the stories of middle-class white couples who could afford the financial expenditures of these legal eligibilities, such as that of Heather and Sara from New Mexico (Chapter 5), who adopted a child from the welfare system, but not before the social worker had reminded them the dangers of raising a child without a father. Another valuable example is the story of Carol and Cheryl (Chapters 3 and 5), white middle-class mothers from Massachusetts, both of whom are legally recognized as parents to their children. When they crossed the state border to Florida, however, their legitimacy as a family was questioned by the hospital, exposing us to the legal inconsistency of their status. Carol and Cheryl's story is elucidative, not only because it highlights how crossing (state) lines can be dangerous for certain marginalized families, as Patton-Imani contends (p. 143), but also as it reminds us how certain legal subjects could unexpectedly be rendered illegitimate overnight or could all-too-easily traverse the line from legitimate to illegitimate subjects (Reference LuibheidLuibheid, 2008). Reading these stories alongside each other reveals how the binary of legal/legitimate versus nonlegal/illegitimate is not static but instead is contingent on various social factors. This means that, for these women, being a legal subject does not signify that they are completely legitimate—as the social worker reminded Heather and Sara. Nor does being a legal subject nullify the possibility of becoming illegitimate in a different location—as the medical staff in Florida reminded Carol and Cheryl. Exhorting the reader to find these links and to contemplate how power-relations are sustained in the everyday experiences of these mothers, Patton-Imani persuasively exposes why certain legal achievements in the realm of equality are less promising than may be conceived at first glance.
Another theme that runs through the book is how the lives of some mothers have flourished at the price of denigrating others. Tracing the history of adoption (Chapter 4), Patton-Imani argues that opening adoption to same-sex couples depended on narratives about poor women of color posing a threat to the future of the nation. She advances this argument by deconstructing certain policies, for example those designed to ease the transfer of children from women deemed “unfit”—mostly, women of color who are systemically represented among those experiencing poverty—to those considered “fit,” such as white same-sex couples, to raise the next generation of citizens in America. Indeed, here, one may observe how Patton-Imani's analysis is in conversation with many other works that lament how the nation consumes the “other” and is constructed on, and simultaneously reinforces, the racial boundaries that delineate who belongs and who does not. Yet, the uniqueness of her analysis lies in exposing how neoliberal logic is very much evident in the experience of white middle-class couples—among them, Kelly and Sa from California (pp. 131–132)—and how they navigate their family-making process within this complicated context. Another particularly potent dimension of Patton-Imani's exploration emerges in Chapters 6–8, where she examines how the same white supremacy, embedded in discourses of adoption, has unwittingly been circulated in discourses around same-sex marriage—including in the realm of LGBTQ-rights politics itself, which is founded on a neo-liberal logic that erases the needs of people of color, rendering them invisible.
While adoption and marriage are at the heart of this book, Patton-Imani also touches on the dynamic of marginalization and alienation ingrained in the life experiences of mothers of color in other contexts as well. The stories of Bekka and Deann and of Iniece and Faith (Chapter 1) are examples showing how mothers of color experience a sense of condemnation when they attend Catholic churches in their home communities (predominantly Latinx or Afro-American), but fail to find a place of belonging in LGBTQ-friendly churches, which are appealing options for white mothers. Patton-Imani's acknowledgment of this double alienation enables her to complicate the linear account of identification and to make visible what has been understood as a dichotomy between two communities (Reference LivermonLivermon, 2012).
The stories in this book point to the need for coalition between anyone who is defined as illegitimate. More than two decades ago, Cathy Cohen's canonical work advocated for a coalitional-queer politics, and this book remains us that there is still a long way to go to realize this vision. Indeed, Patton-Imani highlights that it “requires getting dirty … in the face of relational inequality that pits people against each other” (p. 269). She does not provide us with a clear prescription for this politics but leaves us with food for thought to imagine what this horizon may look like. The metaphor of grafted trees, woven into different parts of the book, is one possible avenue toward this horizon. The grafted tree, she explains, is about “cutting and tying to make new affiliations” (p. 270) and “celebrating and nurturing connections between redwoods, bamboo, oaks, madrone” (p. 248), as “once the young branch of an apple tree is grafted onto a peach tree, it is nurtured by the roots of the peach tree as it grows” (p. 72). Such a lively metaphor urges us to imagine what a politics of sustainability and mutual care might look like (cf. Reference SpadeSpade, 2020). This is a sensibility of solidarity, grounded in the embracing of intersectionality, rather than sameness—which is crucial because, in Patton-Imani's allegorical language, “[w]e need, like redwood trees, to hold each other up in the storm.” (p. 271).
Overall, the book will be appealing to anyone interested in gender and sexuality studies, especially in law, but also more generally. Patton-Imani's capacity to wrestle a legal problem to the ground in a rich, intellectual, and allegorical analysis is worthwhile. Connecting the scattered stories to different milestones in the legal trajectory of LGBTQ rights pushes the reader to think carefully about what legal changes mean for the subjects they are supposed to protect and to consider the conditions under which possibilities for these subjects are created yet simultaneously foreclosed. These connections across multiple terrains, such as immigration, housing, and education (some of which Patton-Imani does not address) invite a productive dialogue with other important works that call us to broaden our vision (see, e.g., Reference AdlerAdler, 2018). Specifically, rather than seeing a single broad-scale intervention (like marriage) as a relief for structural inequality, her analysis underscores why it is crucial to navigate our efforts toward multiple fronts in this societal “forest” in which we live. This book inspires us to envision new pathways of collaboration and solidarity, whether inside or outside the boundaries of legal systems or identity politics in their current form, in the hope of increasing the possibilities for much-needed intersectional social justice.
