Queer Futures: Chosen Families and Alternative Intimacies

Abstract

This chapter examines the endings in all of the texts under analysis in relation to the participants desire to see alternative endings and new definitions of womanhood. This will be followed by a discussion of the participants’ rejection of the myth of the instant mother–baby bond which is portrayed in the texts, alongside their resistance to the conventional notions of family that are overwhelmingly evident. The concept of love will also be debated here, in relation to kinship formations within gay and black communities that are not so dependent on the genetic tie. Through this the overriding theme of heteronormativity as the ideal, which involves the reproduction of normative family through heterosexual love, is exposed and challenged.