Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Staying Power : On Queerness, Inheritances, and the Families We Choose - Zena Sharman

Staying Power

On Queerness, Inheritances, and the Families We Choose

By: Zena Sharman

Paperback | 3 March 2026

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $39.99

$38.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $9.69 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 10 business days

A remarkably frank memoir about interdependence, grieving, and parenting as a queer femme that doesn't leave out the messy or the erotic

Staying Power, Zena Sharman's memoir in essays, is a beautiful and honest journey of care work, grief, parenting, and chosen family in the wake of intergenerational trauma. Exploring the lessons and inheritances of being raised by survivors of complex traumas, the book challenges the notion that one must be healed in order to parent well and celebrates the transformative power of queer family-making beyond gay marriage and assimilation into the nuclear family.

The book, which recounts the author's experiences of raising three children in a four-parent queer family, asks, 'If leaving has helped you survive, how do you learn to stay?' Sharman finds answers in queer kinship, femme erotics, leatherdyke lineages, and the radical possibilities inherent in doing motherwork outside of motherhood, recognising that sometimes you fight the thing you want most.

Staying Power is a moving, deeply personal account of one person's journey of unlearning independence through an experiment in queer collective care.

More in Biographies

Communion : Finding My Way Back to Faith - J. D. Vance

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
Famous Flags : Great Local Grand Finals - Toby Prime

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Reckless : The Saga of Australian Crawl - Jeff Apter

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
Hardcore : 50 Years of Skateboarding in Australia - Jason Boulter

RRP $90.00

$64.99

28%
OFF
Undercurrent : The Hidden Cost of Going Undercover - Jason Somerville
Alan Joyce : Riding the Jet Stream - Alan Joyce

RRP $50.00

$34.99

30%
OFF
What It Takes - Sam Docherty

SIGNED COPY

Hardcover

RRP $45.00

$35.75

21%
OFF
John Farnham : A Little Golden Book Biography - Alisha Monnin
The Smallest Restaurant in Paris - Rachel Khoo

RRP $36.99

$28.75

22%
OFF
Juicy : How to Live a Life in the Wreckage of Expectations - Sheree Joseph
Musquito : The real story of a legendary colonial warrior - Naomi Parry Duncan
Lionel Messi : The Graphic Novel - Ivana Jancova

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
I Wrote My Own Eulogy : The art of appreciating your own life - Bradley Dryburgh
Hunting Elly's Killer : A father's relentless pursuit of justice - Paul Warren
From the Ground Up : How to build a cult brand - Jessica Hatzis

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF