Akin to Kin: Queer Relationalities in Contemporary Family Memoir.

This essay analyzes how traditional notions of family are "queered" in contemporary memoir. I explore how heterosexual coupling becomes unnatural, undermining its equation with reproduction-and even the predictable forward march of family time becomes circular, haunted by alternate kinship models. I refer to this dynamic as "akin to kin" to consider how these representations both approximate and depart from normative ideas of family. I analyze several contemporary family memoirs to tease out moments in which "family" is imagined otherwise through queer relationalities.