Our mutual friend Louie of Esquire Barbershop said he’d help me get in touch with you.

Though much of A Family, Maybe is set in the world of child welfare services, the book, above all, is about family: the love, dedication, and heartache it takes to build one. And it shows how our diverse heritages – African American, Hispanic, Jewish – have produced a new, vibrant whole – right here in Long Beach. 

A Family, Maybe is also a gay memoir. Unfolding during the LGBTQ civil rights struggle in the early 2000s, our story mirrors those of other gay families of that era – from the under-the-radar invisibility to the achievement of equality. As such, it has received an endorsement (copied below) from the head of Family Equality – the nationwide LGBTQ family advocacy organization. Over the years, Family Equality has distributed several of my articles nationwide, including those written for the Fathers’ Day this year and last year. I have also written for a variety of other publications and sites about gay fatherhood and adoptions, including a recent guide for prospective foster/adoptive parents published by Adoption.com.

I have an offer on my book from one independent press so far, and it is under consideration by several other presses. Because it’s a Long Beach story, your endorsement, even if only 1 sentence, would help the book tremendously. Raising our kids coincided with your tenure as the mayor of our hometown, the town which only grew stronger under your leadership.

Long Beach has been our home for the last 25 years. Our kids went to Longfellow Elementary, our younger daughter is attending a high school in Lakewood, and the older one just graduated from Millikan. We have always supported you, having met you first at your campaign meeting at Polly’s Pies on Atlantic Blvd. eight years ago, proudly displaying your yard signs later on, and recently joning your Congressional campaign mailing list. 

Sorry as we are to see you leave us soon for Washington DC, we’ll be proud to support your Congressional campaign with a financial contribution, visual signage in front of our house on a busy corner in California Heights, social media, and of course, our votes. 

I’ll be happy to tell you more about the book in person if you have time, or send you, or your assistant, the manuscript or synopsis for review. I am looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you so much for considering my request.

Lane

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Lane Igoudin, M.A., Ph.D., is a writer, blogger, professor of English at Los Angeles City College, and a proud Dad of two amazing teens.

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Remarkably honest and timely, A Family, Maybe personalizes the experience of the surging number of LGBTQ adoptive parents who came of age in the 2000’s. Liberated from being, what Lane calls “underground families,” they pushed the boundaries of both the LGBTQ and adoptive-parent movements, battling discrimination and a broken child welfare system. In his memoir, Lane holds nothing back in depicting what it took to live through this process, weeding through government bureaucracy and the erratic court system while caring for their adoptive daughters.

Through it all, A Family, Maybe debunks many myths about same-sex couples’ abilities to raise children, and shows instead a thriving, multi-racial and multicultural family based on love, stability, and an infinite devotion to their kids. At a time when foster care and adoption agencies have again been given a license to discriminate against LGBTQ perspective parents, and are thus able to legally deny America’s foster children access to many permanent, loving adoptive families, the story of Lane and Jonathan’s family needs to be told and shared, paving the way for the future LGBTQ adoptive families.

The Rev. Stan J SloanCEO | Family Equality