It's Pride! Let's make this month count.

We need to leave our stories for others to find

Here’s how you can get involved right now.

Every June, my wife and I and our two kids road trip from Brooklyn to Florida, and then on to Mississippi, where we spend part of the summer. It’s a multi-day odyssey that takes us through ten states, many of which are reviewing legislation that is increasingly hostile to trans people—especially youth. As these issues become increasingly politicized, queer people are seeing their identities erased. Books are being removed from shelves. Pride flags are coming down from porches. People in these places are talking less about who they are. This lack of visibility constitutes a crisis for a generation of queer people absorbing toxic messages about themselves.

So to mark Pride this year, we plan to spread visibility by distributing copies of The Family Outing as broadly as possible. First, we invite readers who care about this book to “gift it forward” by backing the book’s purchase. Then we invite librarians, educators and local activists to request copies. The centerpiece of our Pride celebration involves our road trip: this year, we plan to stop off in small towns along the way and leave copies of The Family Outing in as many Little Free Libraries as we can track down. We hope to inspire other people around the country to plant copies of The Family Outing in Little Free Libraries in their communities. 

Why does visibility matter? I knew I was gay by the time I was eight, but I didn’t have language for it. No one spoke about these things. I only saw queer people on the news, and they were mostly men sick with AIDS. My adolescence was depressing and isolating. Then I went to college where I was surrounded by healthy role models who had come out and were living productive lives…and I found a path forward for myself.

I thought of this recently when a woman in Arkansas emailed me a photo of her local library’s copy of The Family Outing. The front had a dedication plate. The book was dedicated to a 14 year-old trans child who had committed suicide in 2020. She included a picture of a laughing, beautiful kid. I think about that child. When we all tell our stories—the most authentic stories about who we really are—we make the world a safer, more loving place for everyone struggling to reconcile family, community and identity.

Why The Family Outing? The memoir tells the story of my family as we—all five of us—came out of the closet. What makes the story unique is that it offers a deep look into the evolution of our interpersonal relationships. It attempts to examine, for example, my brother's experience coming out as trans and at the same time, my mother's experience reconciling her son's identity with her own. At its heart, it's grounded in love and the unique challenges that we humans have in trying to accept each other even when we don't understand each other. In short, it's my hope that this book can be an offering for our time. And, if you want to know a bit more about it, check out this week’s episode of Hello Monday, in which my friend Leah Smart interviews me.

Our Goal: Let’s distribute 3,000 books this summer.

Happy Pride from my family to yours!