International Family Magazine Celebrates Their Second Anniversary, Holiday Season 2007
International Family Magazine is ready to announce themselves to the media industry for Holiday Season, 2007. After 24 months of two moms and a school bus driver working to develop a magazine of storytelling with families around the world, the 2007 holiday season is their coming out party.
New York, NY (PRWEB) December 4, 2007
International Family Magazine is ready to announce themselves to the media industry for Holiday Season, 2007. After 24 months of two moms and a school bus driver working to develop a magazine of storytelling with families around the world, the 2007 holiday season is their coming out party.
International Family Magazine is for the smart global family reader. At online magazine International Family Magazine, http://www. internationalfamilymag. com (http://www. internationalfamilymag. com), the content is not just for parents but aunts, uncles, siblings, and grandparents from around the world who dare to go beyond small talk and tell real-life stories. International Family bravely and inclusively embraces English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Afrikaans, Punjabi and subjects that include death, mental illness, aging, divorce, multi-cultural families, step, gay and lesbian families, international adoption and any subject that touches family life. IF Mag was founded by a New Yorker, Catherine Wayland, who lived through the 9/11 attacks and hopes IF Mag will be an international dialogue of storytelling that makes all the people of the world simply neighbors. But don't think it is all serious, the magazine and the stories are touching and funny as well.
If you don't see enough media that targets real families both in the U. S. and internationally, go to International Family Magazine, at http://www. internationalfamilymag. com (http://www. internationalfamilymag. com). Real families cannot be fit into a neat definition. Real-life families are multi-cultural, multi-generational, and contemporary. Real families are filled with choice mothers, single parents, multi-cultural siblings, divorce, co-parents and grandparents raising the children as well as the parents. Real families deal with death, mental illness, adoption, healthcare, divorce, marriage, love, aging, and special needs. Real families live in safe neighborhoods, war-torn neighborhoods and AIDs ridden neighborhoods.
IF Mag was founded on the idea that it was important to get "real" with one another, tell each other's stories. Maybe if we knew each other better as humans, we would treat each other with respect and dignity. Catherine Wayland, editor and founder of International Family Magazine, IF Mag, should have been in the Deutsche building that was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The only thought that kept going over and over in her mind as she walked dazed from lower Manhattan to midtown was "Who could hate us this much? What have we done?" After watching the towers fall in front of her, she wondered how many families would not sit together around the supper table to tell their stories to one another again.
International Family Magazine is Wayland's hope for an international dialogue. She hopes to engage the world in a conversation that levels the socio-political playing field into one simple equation: the dignity and safety of one's home and family life. In the way of family, Catherine thinks, we are all the same. In that way, we are all neighbors. International Family or IF Mag is published in English, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Afrikaans, Punjabi and French.
Some sample titles and articles that can be found at IF Mag in archive files:
Marta and her Cuba (emigration from Cuba) Hold the Turkey (Indian and Latin couple celebrate holidays) Brown is Beautiful (single white mom decides on international adoption and brings home Zoe from Guatamala) Lucky Grandma Ann (trans-racial family adopt a grandma for their girls)
When Catherine Wayland, editor and founder of International Family Magazine birthed her two sons, Jackson and Brodhir, she couldn't find a family magazine she could relate to on the shelves or online. The families on the newstands were too perfect looking and talked about buying the right baby carriage and cookie decorating. Wayland had been adopted as a child and raised with 2 non-biological siblings with varying cultural backgrounds. She had been raised in the U. K. as a U. S. citizen until six years old. She went on to marry a German American whose family sent her German recipes for a wedding gift. For Wayland, family life felt more complex. Catherine just couldn't find herself or most of her friends in the pages of current family magazines. She scanned the international and stateside periodicals in newsstands and bookstores.
Who was talking about the real stuff that goes on in families behind the new layettes and the right size diapers? Who was willing to talk about depression, love, marriage, second and third marriages, adoption and suicide alongside the holiday party tips? Who was making this global community onlline a mixture of voices from around th world struggling these same challenges in their unique languages and cultures?
Rather than feel isolated, Catherine began her own editorial community for families. Catherine wanted to respect how very unique family life is. Wayland did not want to give parents advice like other magazines who seem to say, "If you organize your morning better, everything will be fine." "If your children are fed decorated cookies at the holidays, you will find the secret to happiness." Instead she decided to engage in the simple and historic tradition of storytelling. Before radio, television and the internet, children learned about life from their great uncles at night by the fire, or grandma as she stirred the supper. Wayland started to tell her stories and collect other family stories as well. She found stories of single parents having INVITRO, transracial and multi-cultural families, step-families trying to get along, half-siblings, a dancing grandmother, a handicapped cousin and more. The storytelling started locally in her Hell's Kitchen neighborhood in New York City and grew around the world. Wayland now has storytellers from all 7 continents.
Here are samples of the varying countries found in archive files:
Africa - A Father's Legacy Iraq - Thoughts from my heart Albania - The Heart & Face of Albania Italy - Christmas in Italy
Catherine wanted to make International Family Magazine inclusive both culturally and multi-generations. She wanted to see the faces of grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles alongside the parents. Catherine also wanted to see more pictures and stories of the real families she saw around her rather than a glossy photo of a "make-believe" family. The families that she saw were all ethnicities and cultures and spoke many languages. International Family Magazine is published in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, French, Italian, Punjabi, and Afrikaans.
Here are some sample stories in different languages in archive files:
Spanish - Cielo/Heaven Afrikaans - My Child's Suicide French - Check out Start
Finally, International Family Magazine or IF Mag provokes its readers into action with the question, "IF we could change the world with a story, would we? " It is easy to say we want a solution to world peace and then get burdened by all the politics. At IF magazine you will find less politics and more personal. Wayland believes that whether we are the president of a country, a group leader of terrorists, children on a school bus, fathers on their way to work, we are humans first. If we get this very basic idea that we are all just trying to make our homes safe for cooking, sleeping, and taking care of our children, maybe there would never again be a genocide, an attack, a war or racism internationally or in our own communities. People believe what they hear and read. So much in media segregates us, alienates us from one another, makes someone right and someone wrong. International Family Magazine insists with its storytelling that there should be more voices to listen to out there in the world. If we could all tell our stories, maybe we could we could all be neighbors together. The world of internet has afforded us the opportunity of a global community. Catherine Wayland decided to launch International Family Magazine as a way to sieze that wonderful opportunity.
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