Mignon R. Moore's Independent Women

The idea of “family” is almost entirely socially constructed. From grandparents, to friends, to wives and fiancés, the means by which we decide who is related to us and who is not is decided by the person and their milieu. In Mignon R. Moore’s “Independent Women: Equality in African-American Lesbian Relationships”, Eviatar Zerubavel’s Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity and Community, and Franz Kafka’s The Judgement, this idea is tested. Who do we consider close enough to us to share our most intimate details and how do we choose them? Each piece offers a different view, which is the “right” way for each of the people described, whether broad (as in Zerbavel’s reading) or specific (as in Moore’s reading), but there are also many similarities in the ways family is defined and actualized. In Mignon Moore’s piece, the familial expectations of an understudied group of people is measured—that of African American lesbians. Prior to this research, most studies tested the ideas of middle-upper class white lesbians who found relationships with feminism in mind. What differs with this article is that it focuses

Before sending the letter off, Georg decides to first tell his father that he will send this letter. To Georg’s surprise, it is revealed that Georg’s father had been in contact with this friend for many years, and had already known about the engagement. Georg’s father, weak from illness, chides Georg for the way he handles his friendships in comparison to how he handles his father’s weaknesses merely because his father was visibly weak. Georg’s father is so disappointed in his son that he sentences him to “death by drowning.” Georg, enamored by his father and parents, obliges, saying as he jumps off a bridge into water that he had always loved his