The Family Outing is a memoir like no other—perhaps because in very few families do all five members eventually come out. Jessi Hempel, a journalist, turns her reporting skills inward to tell the story how her family was reshaped by a series of revelations. In the span of five years, starting when Hempel was in college, she came out as lesbian, her sister as bisexual, her brother as trans, their father as gay, and their mother as a survivor of a formative trauma. It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic forced both isolation and introspection that the members of Hempel’s family came together to truly unpack their identity as a group, finding new ways to heal and connect. —Laura Zornosa