Best Of: Finding 35 Siblings / Growing Up Undocumented

Fresh Air

NPR

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2022

⏱️ 49 minutes

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Summary

Chrysta Bilton's mother was a lesbian who asked a man she'd just met to be her sperm donor. It was only much later that Bilton learned the same man had donated sperm to countless other women. Bilton tells the story of connecting with her 35 siblings and her unusual childhood in her memoir Normal Family.

Ken Tucker reviews Bartees Strange's new album, Farm to Table.

Rafael Agustin's parents were physicians in Ecuador, but when they came to the U.S. they worked at a car wash and Kmart to get by. It wasn't until he was a teen that he learned they were undocumented. Agustin tells his story in his new memoir, Illegally Yours. He wrote for the TV series Jane the Virgin and is the CEO of the Latino Film Institute.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend.
0:06.3	Did a Christa built and talks about her new memoir, ironically titled Normal Family?
0:11.6	Her mother, who is a lesbian, had Christa and her sister with the help of a man she convinced
0:16.2	to become a sperm donor in the early 1980s in the early days of sperm banks.
0:21.5	She made him promise to never do that for anyone else.
0:24.7	But he ended up making a living for about a decade as a donor, fathering dozens of children
0:30.1	many of whom built and later met.
0:32.4	Also, Rafael Aguistín, who was a writer on the TV series Jane the Virgin, tells his
0:37.8	story of growing up as an undocumented immigrant in Southern California.
0:42.4	His new memoir is called Illigally Yours, and Rock Critic Ken Tucker reviews the new album
0:47.3	from Singer and Songwriter Bartice Strange.
0:55.9	This is Fresh Air Weekend, I'm Terry Gross.
0:58.9	For many years, Christa built and father was known to the many other people he fathered
1:03.4	as donor 150 from the sperm bank the California Cryo Bank.
1:08.5	It was one of the very early sperm banks founded in 1977.
1:12.6	However, Christa and her sister, Caitlin, knew him as Jeffrey, their father, although he
1:18.0	was seldom around.
1:20.0	Christa was the first offspring of his donated sperm.
1:23.2	Her mother, Deborah, is a lesbian who was determined to have children.
1:27.1	At that time in the early 1980s, many sperm banks didn't even accept lesbians.
1:32.9	She actually chose Jeffrey to father her children after seeing him at a salon.
1:37.8	She convinced him to help her through a sperm bank.
	...

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