ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the idea of queer kinship, central to People in Trouble and Rat Bohemia, informs three other novels by Schulman. The discussion of Empathy focuses on concepts of empathy, ethics of listening, and reciprocity as the prerequisites for forming queer kinship bonds. In The Child, Schulman's account of queer kinship subverts what Lee Edelman called reproductive futurism. Finally, The Cosmopolitans utilizes a broader understanding of sexual otherness to show the bonds of queer kinship as those which subvert the reification guaranteed by the culture industry, and thus, it may constitute the starting point for making change. All three discussions are rooted in the previous analysis of Schulman's AIDS novels and point out how her writing on the epidemic informs her other endeavors.
