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Francesca T. Royster (BA ’88) has written an amazing memoir, Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance (Abrams, 2023), recounting extended family history as a backdrop for her family’s choice to adopt their daughter.
In their 40s and 50s, Francesca and her wife Annie adopted Cecilia, their daughter. Choosing Family chronicles this journey to motherhood while examining the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a Black, queer, and feminist perspective. Recently, Francesca’s memoir was selected as part of the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Awards Shortlist.
I enjoyed learning more about Francesca, Annie, and Cecilia, along with their extended families. I also gained new appreciation for the way my family has chosen family in ways Francesca describes in a recent interview for WTTW. In this interview, Francesca states, “I’m really interested in that idea of chosen family as one that is about connections, about making a way out of no way, about playing to your strengths and making home with the people who need it.”
Francesca’s memoir helped me frame ways people in my family have made homes for people who need it, including how my dad’s mother, Sylvia Lucille, made a home for other people’s children. In addition to her own three children, MaMa Lu raised two of her sister’s daughters and two of her daughters’ daughters.
As I think about MaMa Lu’s mothering and nurturing, I think of ways my friends and family have nurtured (and been nurtured by) me. I think of ways some of my former students feel like family to me.
One of these students, Charlesia McKinney (BA ’13), got a chance to meet Francesca at an event at the Urbana Free Library in Urbana, Illinois. I am so pleased by the photo above of Charlesia and Francesca on September 23 at the library.
— Deborah Murray, Instructor / Assistant Director, Writing Center
K-State English 