When George M. Johnson was a kid growing up in New Jersey, they loved Black History Month. They were thrilled to learn about the people who shaped American history for the better. But as they got older, they started noticing things were missing—hidden stories that might have meant the most to a queer kid like they were.

George was especially drawn to one of the most dazzling moments in Black history, the Harlem Renaissance. They went searching for what had been covered up, forgotten, or erased, and resurrected those stories in their book, Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known. It's a celebration of the Black queer writers, performers, and activists of 1920s America.

George M. Johnson joins us to talk about Black and queer culture—how it impacted the past, how it enlivens our present, and how it can open up new possibilities for the future. This is a conversation about truth-telling, lineage, identity, and the stories that save us when we finally get to hear them.

Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.

Langston Hughes, "Let America Be America Again"

• Black and Beyond the Binary (with KB Brookins)
• Celebrating Black Womanhood (with Catherine Joy White)

George M. Johnson is an award-winning Black non-binary writer, author, and activist. They are the author of the bestselling Young Adult memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue discussing their adolescence growing up as a young Black Queer boy in New Jersey. Their other books include Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known, and There's Always Next Year. George has also published in places like Teen Vogue, The Root, Essence, Ebony, THEM, and The Grio.

Is it possible to raise kind, feminist boys in our era of manosphere misogyny?

Sonora Jha, an Indian-American immigrant and single mother, says yes. But it takes a lot more than good intentions.

She reflects on raising her son across cultures, teaching empathy through film, talking frankly about sex, consent, and body image, and modeling apology without demanding forgiveness. She pushes back on the idea that feminism harms boys, showing how it can actually free them from shame, silence, and isolation.

Sonora Jha joins us to talk about her book, How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood, Masculinity, and the Making of My Family.

Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.

• Testosterone, Y Chromosomes, and Other Manly Excuses, with Matthew Gutmann
• Detoxing Masculinity, with Ronald Levant and Shana Pryor
• Masculinity, More Liberated and Free, with Frederick Joseph
• Learning About Masculinity Today from the Ancient Romans, with Mike Pope

After a career in journalism in India and Singapore, Dr. Sonora Jha became a professor at Seattle University. She is author of four books, including How to Raise a Feminist Son (2021). Her novels include The Laughter, which won the 2024 Washington State Book Award for Fiction and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the New Yorker, NPR, and others, Foreign (2013), a finalist for the Shakti Bhatt Prize and the Hindu Prize, and her latest, Intemperance.

Adoption is often framed as a loving and selfless decision made by women who want to give their babies a better life—but many relinquishing mothers say it doesn’t actually feel like a real choice at all.

Private domestic adoption in the U.S. operates under conditions of high demand, limited supply, and deep economic inequality. Researchers say women rarely choose adoption over abortion or parenting, and many relinquishing parents report long-term trauma.

Sociologist Gretchen Sisson draws on a decade of interviews in her book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood to examine who adoption really serves—and who it leaves behind.

She invites us to rethink adoption from the ground up, and asks what real support for families would actually look like.

Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.

• Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children, by Viviana A. Zelizer
• The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion, by Diana Greene Foster
• Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation, Ruth Wilson Gilmore

• Relationscapes, "The Truth About Transracial Adoption, (with Angela Tucker)"
• Relationscapes, "What Disabled Parents Can Teach Everyone About Parenting (with Jessica Slice)"
• Relationscapes, "The Rebellious Act of Disabled Parenting (with Eliza Hull)"
• Relationscapes, "The Growing Perils of Pregnancy in America (with Irin Carmon)"

Gretchen Sisson studies abortion and adoption in the United States as a sociologist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the author of Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with women who have relinquished infants for domestic adoption over the past 60 years.