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Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood by Joseph Osmundson
Past event
Featured Book
Spawning Season
"Osmundson's 2022 essay collection Virology established the NYU professor as a voice of his generation…In Spawning Season, Osmundson looks at queer parenthood and the natural world" -Boston Globe
“A singular and deeply moving book. Osmundson has birthed a profound meditation on family and food, longing and loss, hope and grief, humans and salmon. In his story, we find a multitude of beautiful, complicated ways of imagining the future-and then working to build one.” –Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World
From the author of National Book Critics Circle Award and Lambda Literary Award finalist VIROLOGY comes an intimate chronicle of queer family-making.
Since grade school, Joseph Osmundson dreamed of being pregnant. As he grew into the queer scientist he is today, the economic precarity of academia and the warming planet led to his decision not to reproduce. That is, until a lesbian couple he had known since college came to him with a proposition: would Joe be a bio-dad and would he co-parent alongside them?
Soon everything was falling into place. But when the two partners communicated their need for a child to reflect their own racial backgrounds, Joe's whiteness exposed fault lines in their parenting journey. Spawning Season is a genre-bending memoir that treats the scientific as integral to the personal and that builds an entire species of the grief we carry in our bodies. In exploratory prose that builds on the work of Donna Haraway and José Esteban Muñoz, Osmundson considers the ethics of child-rearing in the 21st century, the brutal wonder of caregiving, and the joys and intricacies of building family beyond biology.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
From the author of National Book Critics Circle Award and Lambda Literary Award finalist VIROLOGY comes an intimate chronicle of queer family-making. Since grade school, Joseph Osmundson dreamed of being pregnant. As he grew into the queer scientist he is today, the economic precarity of academia and the warming planet led to his decision not to reproduce. That is, until a lesbian couple he had known since college came to him with a proposition: would Joe be a bio-dad and would he co-parent alongside them? Soon everything was falling into place. But when the two partners communicated their need for a child to reflect their own racial backgrounds, Joe's whiteness exposed fault lines in their parenting journey.
Spawning Season is a genre-bending memoir that treats the scientific as integral to the personal and that builds an entire species of the grief we carry in our bodies. In exploratory prose that builds on the work of Donna Haraway and José Esteban Muñoz, Osmundson considers the ethics of child-rearing in the 21st century, the brutal wonder of caregiving, and the joys and intricacies of building family beyond biology.
Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are strongly encouraged for this event. We have one industrial air purifier, two smaller air purifiers, and four ceiling fans throughout our space. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For other access needs please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com .
Featured Author
Joseph Osmundson
Joseph S. Osmundson is an American biophysicist and writer. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Biology at New York University. Osmundson is the author of various books exploring bodies, queerness, race, and geography
About the Venue
Women & Children First
Women & Children First believes in the transformative power of literature. As intersectional trans-inclusive feminists, we believe books are tools for liberation. Since 1979, we have celebrated and amplified underrepresented voices.
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