Tomas Moniz - Rad Families

I miss the days when Rad Dad would be found in my mailbox and I would wait patiently for my turn to read it. It was mostly dads, fathers, and the frustrations and tenderness and amazement of fathering. As a mother, I needed those stories too. Now I cant wait to get Rad Families and share it with all my friends, parents or not. We all need to hear these stories if only for the diversity of experiences. We all need these stories because we need rad children. We need a rad future.

Nikki McClure, illustrator, author, parent

I love this book! Wonderfully written, tenderly honest, unabashedly hilarious, deeply important stories from the messy-beautiful world of real-life parenting. Thank goodness it exists.

Michelle Tea, author of How to Grow Up

This collection takes the anaesthetized myth of parenting and reminds us that intimacy looks like menses on the toilet seat and the cramps you get when baby-making in a Safeway bathroom. The contributors describe the contours of family in a way that resonates.

Virgie Tovar, editor of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love, and Fashion

Want a thriving family raising magical kids, building beloved community, and rooted in a vision of liberation that frees us all of white supremacist hetero-patriarchy? Read this book.

Chris Crass, author of Towards the Other America and Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy

When I first heard of the Rad Dad zine, my contrarian instinct was to roll my eyes. Of course throughout human time women have raised kids, but the moment a dad takes on a fraction of that responsibility we have to make it out that were all rad and shit. I vowed that if I became a dad I would just do the job and not be a Rad Dad. Just a dad. But then I actually became a dad and read some Rad Dad. It was not at all what I thought it would be. The essays were self-reflective, literary, and important. And it was not all about dads! So Im really excited about this project and expanding the framework to families is both apt and overdue. Full of deep insights, silly anecdotes, unique perspectives, but most of all great writing, Rad Families is the collection for all families.

Innosanto Nagara, author/illustrator of A Is for Activist and Counting on Community

Rad Families: A Celebration

2016 PM Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-62963-230-8

LCCN: 2016948141

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover art by Thi Bui

Cover and interior design by Josh MacPhee/Antumbradesign.org

Published by PM Press

PO Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623

www.pmpress.org

Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing

32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0 and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 0X3

www.fernwoodpublishing.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Rad families : a celebration / edited by Tomas Moniz.

Co-published by PM Press.

ISBN 978-1-55266-915-0 (paperback)

1. Parenting. 2. Families. I. Moniz, Tomas, editor

HQ755.8.R33 2016 649.1 C2016-904350-9

Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism under the Manitoba Publishers Marketing Assistance Program and the Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, for our publishing program. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Ariel Gore

A distant friend called this morning to ask me for parenting advice. Youre the only one I could think to call, she said, almost apologetically.

And it was true that when Id seen her name glowing on my phone, my first thought had been, shes got a lot of nerve. The last Id heard from her, she was publicly slamming me for my lackadaisical parenting.

Adolescence, she whined now. I didnt it would happen to my smart boy. Should I spank him?

No. Definitely not. But I didnt have much more for her in terms of advice.

To be honest, Ive grown weary of most parenting advice.

I never went for the dumbed-down how to pieces and listicles that cluttered the baby magazines when I had my first kid twenty-five years agothe Twelve New Positions in Which to Simultaneously Do the Laundry and Burp the Baby or the Twenty-Five Ways to Spruce Up and Unattractive Toddler Using Big Hats. But even some kinds of essays I used to write (like Raising Kids Wholl Change the World) can make me roll my eyes these days. I mean, most of us dont honestly know what kinds of chickens were raising, let alone who our children will become.

So heres all I could suggest:

1. Be yourself.

2. Be yourself except when yourself wants to spank your kids, in which case stop being yourself and calm the fuck down. Call me if necessary.

Because more than advice or slams, we need support and we need community.

Sometimes that support and community happen in person, sometimes online, sometimes over the phone, and often, for me, they happen via the printed word. I write my experience and I forgive myself. I read your experience and I am at once unburdened and emboldened.

Since I first found an issue of Rad Dad in my Post Office box, it has been part of my support and my community. What I love about Rad Dad is that its here for us without judgment and most times without advice.

I am still learning myself through fathering, writes one father in Rad Families, and twenty-five years into this parenting thing, Im still learning myself through it all, too. This is my community and yours. This book is a celebration of our community.

Tomas Moniz

S tart anywhere. Skip around. Look for what you need. Make it yours. Pick up this book when you want to feel a little less anxious or worried. Not that these stories have answers, but they might remind you that you are not alone.

Why Rad? someone asked me about the title. At the time, all I could say was because its so hard sometimes. But what I meant was that sharing our stories, honestly, so that others may learn or feel consoled or less frazzled is one of the most radical things we can do.

Over a decade ago I started Rad Dad as a hand-stapled zine to trade with other people (most of whom were not parents) at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, but I was desperate for help. It initially attempted to explore fathering differently than the mainstream patriarchally constructed narrative, all about discipline and heteronormative masculinity. My goal: to silence Adam Sandler forever.

The zine evolved to include other genders, providing a space for marginalized voices in the parenting world, fathers and parents of color, the trans and queer, the step-parents, the allies and child care providers.