Queerspawn in Love by Kellen Anne Kaiser; She Writes Press, $16.95
In her affecting, heartfelt memoir Queerspawn in Love, Kellen Kaiser, a writer with a particularly fascinating journey into and out of the lens of love, lays her heart bare on the page as a kind of exorcism of the bad luck that has plagued her romantic life.
Born in 1981, the author was raised in San Francisco as the daughter of four lesbians, a unique family dynamic that seems unremarkable by today's standards, but in the era when the author was raised, "having gay parents meant something." Kaiser's addictive, dramatically written story, which she admits she wrote "because I want my soul back," opens at a dinner where her best friend sits across from her fondling her oversized diamond engagement ring while Kaiser drowns her sorrows in a chocolate souffle, lamenting the disintegration of her own five-year-long fallen romance with a man serving in a foreign army.
The author's history, beginning in 2001, is presented in chatty, conversational prose much akin to a dialogue enjoyed with a friend over Sunday brunch. Kaiser vividly recounts her love affair with Lior, whom she'd gone to preschool with as a child at a Jewish community center. The couple met again as adults while Kaiser was attending college and Lior was home on leave from his duties as a soldier serving on the Israeli Defense Forces.
Though their philosophical differences drove shards of doubt into their burgeoning romance, love won out, and the long-distance relationship that ensued burned bright for years. Eventually, Lior was discharged and they moved in together, but along with the chronicle of their relationship, Kaiser shares her perspective on war and her immersive role as a veteran protester. "I'd protested the first Gulf War with my family," she recounts. "I'd protested for Tibet, Burma, reproductive rights, racial equality, and gay rights, and against the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum." Her opinions on Israel are clearly stated in the book, just as they may have been while she and Lior were a closely-knit couple. "I've never understood how people can believe in autonomy for folks like the Palestinians and the Tibetans, then demand Israel's demise. If you believe that every people who feels the need to have their own space deserves it, then a two-state solution is probably the answer." Eventually, these beliefs would drive a wedge between her and IDF soldier Lior. "Which came first: my desire for Israel, or my desire for Lior?" Kaiser questions.
Perhaps the most telling statement in the memoir arrives as Kaiser reaches an epiphanic moment in the book's eloquent epilogue. Here, she reflects upon and extends a literary rosette toward her mothers, for instilling morals and standards in her life, which have formed a kind of salve on her wounds after her painful break-up. Her mothers "have found self-satisfaction outside of men �" outside of partners, too, for the most part. They are happy for their own sake," she reflects. "Lesbians do not live in spite of or despite men. They build their lives to their own specifications. I have learned to take comfort in the comfort they find within themselves."
Published by Berkeley-based She Writes Press, this resonant memoir touches on themes of love, family, belonging, personal (and conflicting) values, the world of romance and engagement, and how these sandcastles can be washed away in a sea of misunderstanding, discord, and resentment. Personal satisfaction is the key to a fulfilling life, and the memoir reflects this with illuminative prose and a true heart.