A big-hearted account of one family’s trans story.
Brookes describes mothering young twins, one cis, one trans, in this debut memoir.
The author, a television journalist-turned-filmmaker, author, and activist, was thrilled when she learned she was pregnant with twin boys. Her complicated relationship with her own mentally ill mother had convinced her that girls would be way more trouble. Boys would be easy—or so she thought. Their individual personalities were apparent right from the beginning: “Jacob seemed soft and chill,” remembers Brookes. “Gideon looked like he was ready to battle the world. In retrospect, he probably was.” When, at the age of 8, Gideon informed Brookes and her husband, Mike, that he thought he might be “transister,” the author wasn’t surprised. Gideon had been gender non-conforming his entire life, playing with Barbies and requesting spa-themed birthday parties. Even before this confession, Brookes had attended meetings of a support group for the parents of LGBTQ children. She was fully prepared to be the best mother she could be for her daughter, who soon chose the name Gabriella, and resolved to ensure that she had as healthy and happy a childhood as possible. As the family moved into uncharted territory, however, growing pains proved unavoidable—particularly when it became apparent that the family member least willing to accept Gabriella’s gender was her twin brother, Jacob. Brookes is a skilled storyteller, fleshing out her family’s dynamic with the detailed prose of a novelist. Here the twins draw self-portraits on their bedroom wall: “Whereas Jacob had added a football to his portrait, Gideon had transformed his body entirely. Gone were his legs, and in their place was a huge green mermaid tail, with elaborate fins drawn in. Toward the top of the portrait, he had added a wavy mane of blond hair that offset his bright blue eyes.” There’s something universal in the author’s tireless attempts to do things right: she handles Gabriella’s coming out with the same maternal determination exhibited during earlier attempts to diagnose the children’s learning disorders and get them into the best day school. People from families of all stripes are bound to see something of themselves in this tale.
A big-hearted account of one family’s trans story.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781647425210
Page Count: 264
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.
An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.
In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781953368669
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.
“Not a Cinderella story.”
Baldwin’s loosely written memoir is about motherhood and pregnancy loss, marriage to a celebrity, being the target of gossip and criticism, the experiences of neurodivergency and bilingualism, and more. “When Alec and I met, I was twenty-seven and he was fifty-three,” she writes. “Now, it’s nearly a decade and a half later….People always ask me: What is life actually like with seven kids (and an Alec)? It’s amazing and chaotic.” This book comes on the heels of the first season of the family’s reality show, The Baldwins, seemingly designed to answer the same burning question. While the author seems like a nice, well-meaning person, one comes away from this memoir hoping the television version, with the story sculpted by professionals, is the more entertaining response. Given the fact that there has been controversy about Baldwin’s background, perhaps she should have written a straightforward autobiography. But she has not, and the reader might need to do some research to understand the nature of some of the attacks she writes about. The veracity of her Spanish identity has come under fire, as her birth name is Hilary, she was born in Boston, and is not of Latine descent—but you won’t learn those facts from this book. The author’s relative youth, her choice to have her sixth child via surrogate, and Alec Baldwin’s involvement in the death of a colleague on a film set have all been media fodder. She discusses several specific nemeses without naming them, which is not very interesting. “I grapple with the question: Why am I here in the public space? Why am I ‘relevant’? Am I here because an actor fell in love with me? Am I here because I’m a yoga teacher and have things to say about mental and physical health? Am I here because I had a lot of kids?” It’s not clear that she knows, and neither will you.
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781668009987
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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