Windy City Media Group Frontpage News

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

home search facebook twitter join
Gay News Sponsor Windy City Times 2023-12-13
DOWNLOAD ISSUE
Donate

Sponsor
Sponsor
Sponsor

  WINDY CITY TIMES

A Joyful Perspective: An interview with Laura Siegel, co-editor of Out of The Closet
by Gregg Shapiro
2001-08-29

This article shared 1578 times since Wed Aug 29, 2001
facebook twitter google +1 reddit email


Laura Siegel and Nancy Lamkin Olson are both the proud mothers of gay sons. You could say that both women are practically bursting with pride. The anthology Out of The Closet, Into Our Hearts: Celebrating Our Gay/Lesbian Family Members ( Leyland Publications, San Francisco, 2001, $15.95 ) , co-edited by Siegel and Olson is proof of their feelings. A labor of love, if ever there was one, this collection combines poetry and prose pieces written by the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children of gays and lesbians, honoring their relatives and extolling their virtues.

Gregg Shapiro: Please tell me about the genesis of the book.

Laura Siegel: My son came out to us in 1985. I guess that was the very first "genesis." Pretty quickly, actually, we started to get involved, not in PFLAG ( Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays ) , but more in the gay community. We just started being there a lot. I found immediate joy and a certain kind of energy that I had not encountered before. A kind of celebration, and I saw a celebration in the gay community that I don't think we have in the straight world, personally. Then my husband and I started going to PFLAG. I wasn't going there for support. My first introduction to PFLAG was marching in the ( Pride ) parade with them. Again, the outpouring of energy and love was something that drew me in. I think that my experience ( at PFLAG meetings ) was quite different from the majority of the people who came to PFLAG. I soon began doing the newsletter for San Francisco PFLAG. I was just drawn to telling the stories that were about joy. There were many out there. I felt there was a lot out there about the grief and the pain. I was drawn to the stories about joy. Then I went online, to a group called PFLAG Talk. It's a PFLAG list serve, not affiliated with PFLAG. I met 12 other moms on there who I felt had my kind of spirit. We formed our own little group. Nancy Lamkin Olson, my co-editor, is one of those moms. She said, one day, "We're hearing so much joy in our children, don't you think other people do too? We should compile these stories."

GS: How did you go about soliciting material?

LS: PFLAG has a national newsletter. We put an ad in that. We sent letters to all of the chapters. I put an ad in a writer's magazine and on bulletin boards. We got a huge response. A fair number of the people were ( telling ) the stories that we had seen before...about transition and grief and angst. We wanted a little something different for this book.

GS: One of the striking things is the mix of published and never-before-published writers...was your intention to have the writing in the book be from both the literary community as well as pieces of a more personal nature?

LS: No ( laughs ) . I had no expectation of what was going to come in at all. We took it as we got it. Some of it was previously published. That was another way that we got stories...by going out and looking for them. The Internet was a great source for that, and magazines.

GS: Two of the most notable contributors to the book are NBC-TV movie critic Gene Shalit and Matthew Shepard's father Dennis Shepard.

LS: They're both previously published ( pieces ) and they own the rights to them, so we did have to get permission.

GS: What books did you find to be of value to you during your son Stuart's coming out?

LS: I gravitated towards gay male fiction because I wanted to know what my son was experiencing. I knew what I was experiencing. I had no need to read any of the books about parents and how to deal with having a gay child. I remember Edmund White's novel, A Boy's Own Story. That was the first really striking book that I read. The boy's angst really resonated for me with what I saw in my son. I really liked Aaron Fricke's Reflections Of A Rock Lobster.

GS: Was it your intention for your book to take its place on the shelf in the PFLAG library?

LS: That's my first intention...to have these voices of celebration heard. Too often we hear the anger and the grief and the angst. I have even had people say to me that they're ( the voices in the book ) not real, but they are real. It's curious that people say that, because I think it's the direction that we want to move in. If you ask anybody, they'll tell you that they want their parents to be part of their life...to celebrate who they are. If that's what we want...then here it is...why wouldn't it be real? I think it would be a great addition to every PFLAG library. I think it would be a good book for gay/lesbian/bi/trans people to give to their family members.


This article shared 1578 times since Wed Aug 29, 2001
facebook twitter google +1 reddit email

Out and Aging
Presented By

  ARTICLES YOU MIGHT LIKE

Gay News

JP Karliak morphs into non-binary character for Disney+'s X-Men '97 2024-03-22
- series X-Men '97, a revival of the popular X-men: The Animated Series that's both continuing the ongoing mutant storyline and breaking new ground along the way. The character of Morph now looks more like the comic ...


Gay News

WORLD Uganda items, HIV report, Mandela, Liechtenstein, foreign minister weds 2024-03-21
- It turned out that U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam traveled to Uganda on Feb. 19-27, per The Washington Blade. He visited the capital of Kampala and the nearby city of ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ Queer musicians, Marvel situation, Elliot Page, Nicole Kidman 2024-03-21
- Queer musician Joy Oladokun released the single "I Wished on the Moon," from Jack Antonoff's official soundtrack for the new Apple TV+ series The New Look, per a press release. The soundtrack, ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ Lady Gaga, 'P-Valley,' Wendy Williams, Luke Evans, 'Queer Eye,' 'Transition' 2024-03-15
- Lady Gaga came to the defense of Dylan Mulvaney after a post with the trans influencer/activist for International Women's Day received hateful responses, People Magazine noted. On Instagram, Gaga stated, "It's appalling to me that a ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ Jinkx Monsoon, Xavier Dolan, 'Frida,' Lena Waithe, out singer 2024-03-08
- Two-time RuPaul's Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon is headed back to the New York stage, joining off-Broadway's Little Shop of Horrors as Audrey beginning April 2, according to Playbill. The casting makes Monsoon the first drag ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ Queer actors, icons duet, Hunter Schafer, Oscars, Elizabeth Taylor 2024-03-01
- Queer actor Kal Penn is set to star in Trust Me, I'm a Doctor—a film that chronicles the final days of actress/model Anna Nicole Smith, whose overdose death in 2007 at age 39 sparked a tabloid ...


Gay News

Dorian Film Awards: 'All of Us Strangers' takes top prizes 2024-02-27
- February 26, 2024 - Los Angeles, Ca. - For its 15th Dorian Film Awards, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics fully embraced All of Us Strangers, writer-director Andrew Haigh's fantastical and tear-inducing tale of two ...


Gay News

SAG Awards honor Streisand, few LGBTQ+ actors 2024-02-25
- Queer entertainers made their mark—although not a major one—at the 2024 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, held Feb. 24 in Los Angeles. The event was live-streamed on Netflix for the first time. Indigenous and Two-Spirit actor ...


Gay News

WORLD Caribbean ruling, Pussy Riot, Russian raid, Canadian warning, anti-trans bar 2024-02-23
- The top court in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines dismissed a challenge to colonial-era anti-gay laws, Reuters reported. Javin Johnson and Sean Macleish—two gay men who had pushed to decriminalize ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ Kristen Stewart, Rock Hudson, Talia Keys, 'True Detective,' Marvel comic 2024-02-23
- At the Berlin Film Festival, Kristen Stewart defended her photo shoot for a Rolling Stone magazine cover that went viral and divided audiences on social-media platforms, per The Hollywood Reporter. "The existence of a female body ...


Gay News

Second Glance Productions hosts LGBTQupid Soiree 2024-02-16
- In celebration of Valentine's Day, Chicago based film and media production company Second Glance hosted The LBGTQupid Soiree. The event, which was focused on spinning attitudes on this particular day, was presented at The iO ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ Elton John, Hannah Gadsby, video game, Jennifer Lopez, queer thriller 2024-02-16
Video below - Sir Elton John has sold his Atlanta home and is now auctioning off more than 900 of his personal items that were kept in the 13,500-square-foot condo, The Daily Mail noted. The massive collection includes rare ...


Gay News

GALECA announces nominees for the Dorian Film Awards 2024-02-07
--From a press release - Feb. 5, 2024 - GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, consisting of over 500 entertainment critics, journalists and media icons, today announced the group's democratically chosen nominees for its 15th Dorian Film Awards. All of ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ JoJo Siwa, Tom Holland, Bowen Yang, Pet Shop Boys, Mariah Carey 2024-02-02
- In the wake of Nigel Lythgoe exiting So You Think You Can Dance, queer personality JoJo Siwa is returning to the series, per Deadline. Siwa, who was a judge on season 17 of the Fox show, will replace Lythgoe, who left ...


Gay News

Leather Archives & Museum announces 2024 Fetish Film Forum 2024-01-27
--From a press release - CHICAGO, Illinois—After a wildly successful inaugural year, including a 10-film series at the Leather Archives & Museum and a 5-film series at FACETS, the Leather Archives & Museum is thrilled to announce the continuation of Fetish ...


 


Copyright © 2024 Windy City Media Group. All rights reserved.
Reprint by permission only. PDFs for back issues are downloadable from
our online archives.

Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and
photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no
responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials.

All rights to letters, art and photos sent to Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago
Gay and Lesbian News and Feature Publication) will be treated
as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such,
subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the
columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are
their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature Publication).

The appearance of a name, image or photo of a person or group in
Nightspots (Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times
(a Chicago Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature
Publication) does not indicate the sexual orientation of such
individuals or groups. While we encourage readers to support the
advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Nightspots (Chicago
GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay, Lesbian
News and Feature Publication) cannot accept responsibility for
any advertising claims or promotions.

 
 

TRENDINGBREAKINGPHOTOS







Sponsor


 



Donate


About WCMG      Contact Us      Online Front  Page      Windy City  Times      Nightspots
Identity      BLACKlines      En La Vida      Archives      Advanced Search     
Windy City Queercast      Queercast Archives     
Press  Releases      Join WCMG  Email List      Email Blast      Blogs     
Upcoming Events      Todays Events      Ongoing Events      Bar Guide      Community Groups      In Memoriam     
Privacy Policy     

Windy City Media Group publishes Windy City Times,
The Bi-Weekly Voice of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Community.
5315 N. Clark St. #192, Chicago, IL 60640-2113 • PH (773) 871-7610 • FAX (773) 871-7609.