Mommy Queerest: Contemporary Rhetorics of Lesbian Maternal Identity.

• Author: Brookey, Robert
• Position: Book Reviews

Mommy Queerest: Contemporary Rhetorics of Lesbian Maternal Identity. By Julie M. Thompson. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 2002; pp. xiii + 177. $29.95.

I have to admit that the appeal of the gay marriage and parenting phenomenon has always escaped me. Consequently, when it came to prioritizing a political agenda, the issues involving queer families have not made the top of my list. Therefore, it was with mixed emotions that I picked up Julie Thompson's Mommy Queerest.

On the positive side, I loved the title; it was short and it was smart. By smart, I mean that it plays off a reference that immediately evokes the thesis of the book. Many of us may remember Mommie Dearest, both the book by Christina Crawford that chronicled the abuse she suffered at the hand of her adoptive mother Joan Crawford, and the horrendously misguided film adaptation starring Faye Dunaway as Joan. Christina's accounts, and Dunaway's histrionic performance, created an image of a monstrous mother. Consequently, in the popular imagination Joan Crawford came to signify an aberration, an antithesis of motherhood, and the title Mommy Dearest became an ironic component in the signifying chain. Therefore, Mommy Queerest is more than a play on words, it is a title designed to evoke a sense of irony, because, as Thompson notes, the mere concept of a lesbian mother, is to many minds, an oxymoron.

On the negative side, I was ambivalent about the idea of lesbian motherhood, and I will admit indifference to the problems of lesbian mothers. I was surprised to see that Thompson originally shared my ambivalence and indifference. In the first chapter, however, she notes that her attitude changed as she began investigating the discourse that surrounds and produces the lesbian mother. Her analysis of these discourses changed my attitude as well. Thompson remarks on the reactions that she received from various people when she began researching lesbian mothers, claiming these reactions led her to realize that "sexism and anti-lesbian attitudes affect the live of all women." She surmised that "since my topic appeared to threaten such a variety of people, I decided that I must really be on to something." Having read her analysis, I have to agree: she is really on to something.

Thompson looks at the construction of the terms "lesbian" and "mother" in context the of three different discourses: the representation of lesbian mothers in the "straight" (read, popular) and...