Books that should be written

I picked up this little gem from the library sale cart.  It was more appealing to me as a historian than as lesbian mom.  Zack's Story was published in 1996, and it's crazy to think that was almost 20 years ago.  At the company store, you can buy a new copy of this book for $119.00 or a used copy for 1 cent. 

1996.  B was a Sophomore at a Catholic high school, listening to Gansta rap, playing sports, etc. I was probably on my second break from college (not counting a "gap year," which at the time was just called "not going to college").  I was living in Boston with a bunch of people, working a crappy job, going to shows, drinking beer, eating tofu pot pie.  DOMA vaguely registered with me as yet another Clinton betrayal.  I had been a Rock-the-Vote-er in 1992, and Clinton's myriad betrayals (particularly on welfare "reform" and Don't Ask/Don't Tell) shaped my political self.  I kept voting in major elections, but Obama was the the first major party candidate I voted for after Clinton. 

Gay marriage did allow me to graduate from college.  I worked a minor scam, claiming to be gay married in order to live off campus, and therefore could afford my last two years of school.  Otherwise, gay marriage didn't mean much to me, I never planned to get marriage-having no interest in being bourgeois.  Ideologically, I'm still in that place, but live intervenes in one's non-bourgeois fantasies.  I was once talking to a woman who was a former Black Panther at a faculty dinner.  She told me "People your age, you can't understand.  We thought, we KNEW, the Revolution was about to begin-it was going to happen.  You don't save for retirement when you're planning the Revolution.  And here I am."

Zack's Story is a nice book.  The text is wordy for my taste, and the photos are old enough to be dated, but not old enough to be vintage, but it is nicely written.  I don't think LB will ever read this book, but I'm happy to have it for my collection.

I'd gone to the library looking for books about race and parenting.  I ordered from the library The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism, although I think it's a book that many people have issues with-I wanted to check it out from myself.  The next book that came up was one published in 1929 that I used for my dissertation.  Nothing I found in the library system was really what I was looking for-more of a handbook about how to build coalitions among diverse groups of parents across lines of class, ethnicity, race, and language.  How do you do that?  If anyone out there has resources to suggest, I'd love to hear about them.