“Family" is an elastic term
Writer WoMANtís RANDom wrote Rubberband Families to stretch our understanding of the word
Dec. 13, 2016 – Families are tricky institutions, even when relatively stable. And sometimes they are just terrible, absolutely terrible, and leave you with the feeling that you would have been better off going it alone. But whatever one's personal biography, early familial experiences affect our past and present relational habits and if we explore these habits perhaps we can bring to life more ideal relations.
Rubberband Families, an interactive, bilingual DIY book, provides one such means of exploration. Ostensibly a children's book but also designed with adults in mind, Rubberband Families invites us to re-imagine familial constellations free from traditional norms and stifling configurations. An ensemble of fantasy creatures depict relationships of caring and responsibility whilst at the same time encouraging the reader to visualize and create her own. What originally began as a means of archiving family histories, emerged as a project of intervention.
As a master's student abroad author WoMANtís RANDom was exposed to various family arrangements: "In Toronto I started to craft the stories that I experienced within different families due to my life as a gender fluid person. I started crafting the families I had been in." At the same time, the storyteller found the German publishing market lacking when it came alternate families. This was made all the more clear on returning from Canada's queer family-friendly city, where the conversation had been ongoing for a while: "I had access to wonderful books, in particular that represented images of all kinds of families as well as issues of gender and race in a positive way". It was this need to document and showcase the familial possibilities that led to Rubberband Families, RANDom's most recent archival offering: "As with this archive, a book in this case, I encourage other people to archive their stories, to craft their stories, to have a medium that they can talk with or give to different spaces in which they want to see the change."
It's said that most of subconscious life is consumed by the search for those connections reminiscent of what we've known and, perhaps, lacked in our younger years. Rubberband Families offers the reader an opportunity to envision intimate spaces that more clearly reflect, root and nourish our various human needs, recognizing that the answer is as varied and changing as we are.
Riri Hylton
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