Saving Delaney … by white privilege: a memoir of lesbian motherhood and anti-Black ableism

Abstract

Saving Delaney is one of a number of “special needs” parent memoirs published in the United States since 2000 and is the only memoir about raising a disabled child in the United States written by lesbian parents. Like many representations of disability, “special needs” parent memoirs use a problematic narrative in which the presumed negative effects of disability are individually overcome before life lived happily ever after. Also like popular and positive representations of disability, the children subjects of “special needs” parent memoirs are almost entirely white. In this paper, I contextualize Saving Delaney within histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) family-making in the United States, drawing particular attention to the overrepresentation of children with disabilities among gay and lesbian adoptive parent households. Then, drawing attention to the overwhelming whiteness of both positive portrayals of children with disabilities in “special needs” parent memoirs and LGBT families in scholarship, data, and media, I argue that white privilege facilitates visibility and protection against disability stigmas. I demonstrate that LGBT family-making and caring for children with disabilities cohere as issues of comprehensive reproductive justice and that narratives like Delaney’s fail to advance the reproductive justice movement due to reiterative entrenchment in the material and discursive privileges of whiteness.