While Rumaan Alam celebrates the diversity of family, he knows that his own unusual nuclear family – two gay fathers and their adopted black children – does not come without challenges. In response, Alam practices and advocates “radical honesty.”
This policy of radical honesty may also have contributed to Alam’s success as an author. His two novels – That Kind of Mother and Rich and Pretty – both take a female perspective of the world and relationships. “I exist within a nuclear family where there are no women. It is incumbent…to raise our boys with an understanding of the [other] 50% of the planet,” Alam notes.
Alam’s radical honesty has also made him a striking regular voice for the “Care and Feeding” column at Slate.com. There, the husband and father offers advice to parents of all kinds, from tips on how to reward good behavior to handling racist remarks.
Rumaan Alam Gets Radically Honest
After a successful blind date, Rumaan Alam and his husband knew they would be a perfect pair. The couple soon decided to become parents, adopting two boys.
“I am conscious of people looking at our family in a different way, and I don’t blame them for that,” Alam says, “A brown [South Asian] man and a white man with two little black boys is going to attract looks, especially because they’re the two best looking children on the planet.”
All jokes aside, Alam knows that “subtlety doesn’t work for children.” When asked by his children where the “mommy” is in their family or why he is profiled at airport security, Alam has to be radically honest. At the same time, he emphasizes the positive beauty in uniqueness and difference. “There’s always something that makes you your own,” he remarks, “And if we all recognize that, I think we would be a little better off.”
Navigating a Male-Dominated Life
In both of his novels, Alam produces a convincing portrayal of white adult women debating family plans.
“I am obviously thrilled when readers who are women feel I’ve been able to write from that point convincingly,” he relates. “But I’d also point out that it’s the challenge of the writer of fiction to inhabit or animate other people.”
From accurate breastfeeding scenes to fears about walking home alone, readers laud Alam for publishing the inner thoughts of women. “[It] is my absolute favorite feedback to hear… that I have successfully captures an experience that’s theirs but not mine,” Alam says.
Rumaan Alam Takes on the Family Experiment
“We know that families are a matter of chance as much as choice,” Alam says. His own father abandoned the family when Alam was a teenager, paving the way for accepting non-traditional family structures. “My first family broke apart,” he explains. “But this liberated me to create a new family as I pleased.”
Alam feels that the two-dad dynamic actually enriches his own family. “As two men, we weren’t harangued by well-enough-meaning parents [or] grandparents about our biological clocks,” he notes. “My husband and I divide the house work…equally.”
Alam also hopes that his radical honesty with his children and with society can help others re-think their expectations when it comes to family. “When gay men and women marry and build conventional families, we become something other than the outsiders we’ve long been,” he says.
