Author Jesse Hempel’s goal is to spread visibility by distributing 3,000 copies of The Family Outing this June! The book is a striking and remarkable literary memoir about one family’s transformation, with almost all of them embracing their queer identities.
For readers of Fun Home, Educated, and Devotion, a striking and remarkable literary memoir about one family’s transformation, with almost all of them embracing their queer identities.
Fascinating, funny, and wise, The Family Outing is an affirmation to all of us who know the pain and shame of hiding our truest self, and a stirring invitation into the courage, freedom, and joy of living our whole truth.”–Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed, founder of Together Rising
From Jesse: “As a wave of anti-trans legislation sweeps the country, queer people are seeing their identities erased. Books are being removed from shelves. Pride flags are coming down from porches. People are talking less about who they are. This lack of visibility constitutes a crisis for a generation of queer people absorbing toxic messages about ourselves. So to mark Pride this year, let’s plan to spread visibility by distributing copies of The Family Outing as broadly as possible. Every June, my wife and I and our two kids road trip from Brooklyn to Florida, and then on to Mississippi, where we spend our 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. 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. You can follow our adventure on Instagram. And, you can leave copies of the book in your own Little Free Libraries and tell us about them here.“
Jessi Hempel was raised in a seemingly picture-perfect, middle-class American family. But the truth was far from perfect. Her father was constantly away from home, traveling for work, while her stay-at-home mother became increasingly lonely and erratic. Growing up, Jessi and her two siblings struggled to make sense of their family, their world, their changing bodies, and the emotional turmoil each was experiencing. And each, in their own way, was hiding their true self from the world.
By the time Jessi reached adulthood, everyone in her family had come out: Jessi as gay, her sister as bisexual, her father as gay, her brother as transgender, and her mother as a survivor of a traumatic experience with an alleged serial killer. Yet coming out was just the beginning, starting a chain reaction of other personal revelations and reckonings that caused each of them to question their place in the world in new and ultimately liberating ways.
Jessi Hempel is the host of the award-winning podcast Hello Monday, and a senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. For nearly two decades, she has been writing and editing features and cover stories for magazines including Wired, Fortune, and TIME about work, life, and meaning in the contemporary age. She has appeared on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox, and CNBC, addressing the culture and business of technology. Hempel is a graduate of Brown University and received a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and children.
