Moore, Mignon R. Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), $27.95, 318 pp. ISBN: 978-0-520-26952-1 (cloth).

Mignon R. Moore’s Invisible Families follows on the heels of important work in Black queer studies, but from within the discipline of sociology. Moore argues that identity—and particularly racial identity—“remains a relatively stable and slowly changing power system in the way it structures the life chances of Black Americans”. She also notes that while other studies have employed traditional methods for soliciting lesbian research subjects, these methods are ineffective among Black lesbian communities where social events, especially those held at people’s homes, are much more effective spaces to recruit participants for research. Moore finds that middle-class women are more likely to embody a “femme” or “gender bender” gender presentation than working-class women, mostly due to their aspirations of Black respectability. The field of queer studies emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s mostly in English departments, women’s and gender studies, and other humanities-based disciplines.