The Family Outing

A Memoir

By: Jessi Hempel

Narrated by: Jessi Hempel

“Fascinating, funny, and wise, The Family Outing is an affirmation to all of us who know the pain and shame of hiding our truest self, and a stirring invitation into the courage, freedom, and joy of living our whole truth.”—Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed, founder of Together Rising

A striking and remarkable literary memoir about one family’s transformation, with almost all of them embracing their queer identities.

Jessi Hempel was raised in a seemingly picture-perfect, middle-class American family. But the truth was far from perfect. Her father was constantly away from home, traveling for work, while her stay-at-home mother became increasingly lonely and erratic. Growing up, Jessi and her two siblings struggled to make sense of their family, their world, their changing bodies, and the emotional turmoil each was experiencing. And each, in their own way, was hiding their true self from the world.

By the time Jessi reached adulthood, everyone in her family had come out: Jessi as gay, her sister as bisexual, her father as gay, her brother as transgender, and her mother as a survivor of a traumatic experience with an alleged serial killer. Yet coming out was just the beginning, starting a chain reaction of other personal revelations and reckonings that caused each of them to question their place in the world in new and ultimately liberating ways.

©2022 Jessi Hempel (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

The bonds between siblings

Sweet book. Filled with heart, hard lessons, losses and love. A family struggles to remain a family despite many unexpected twists. Beautiful.

Wonderfully told.

A compelling and wonderfully told memoir about the deepest truths of our lives and honoring the people we are always becoming.

Reflective and open

I found this account to be an honest and reflective dive into the fascinating perspectives of a family coming to grips with unmet expectations and taking ownership over their own growth and futures. It was beautiful inside and out.

sensitive account of a family who all came out

Jessi Hempel does an admirable job writing and narrating about her family who all held secrets of one type or another mostly about not being straight and cisgendered. IN spite of the challenges all the siblings and parents faced growing up, Jessi outlines a family, particularly a set of siblings, who know how to communicate and really value each other as people. Rarely self pitying and replete with characters one wants to root for, "Family Outing" is a triumph of strength, not just for the author but all in the family orbit.

Learned “Coming Out” is not what I always thought…

It’s my first time writing a review for a book. But after attending a book interview with her, if I liked the book before, I loved it even more after. With her reading the last 1 hour, it was like a friend was there reading it to me. Jessi Hempel’s live chat about her whole family’s coming out was candid and showed what the book talks all throughout. Coming “out of the closet” is so much more than announcing your sexual preference or identity to one person or the world, but you have to read the book to find out what i mean. Loved the respect towards every one of her family members how she addressed them throughout the book, each one’s unique identity. She was so blessed to count with the support and memories of everyone in her family to make this touching and sometimes even funny book about families all throughout US that live like this, maybe your neighbor and you don’t even know it, nor they… I’m not much into memoirs, but this one I listed to the 10 hrs and will recommend to anyone with a queer member and/or mental health parent.

Finding Your Authentic Self Through Love

Jessie Hempel does an excellent job of explaining how people "come out of the closet." The narrative is well-written and includes vivid, relatable situations that readers can easily understand. As an exploration of the LGBTQ experience, it captures what life feels like for those trying to live true to themselves in the real world. However, this book resonates beyond the LGBTQ community, making it relevant for anyone seeking to live their true, authentic life.

Would have been a higher rating if they left the first two hours out.

The history of their parents seemed to have very little to do with the story.