With vivid rawness, Belc paints an impressionist mural of what it means to be a parent while also birthing his true self.
A powerful memoir in essays about the author’s experiences with nonbinary parenthood.
Though the literature on parenthood is boundless, books on nonbinary parenthood are scarce. In his debut, Belc explores the universal emotions of ambivalence, joy, and occasional dread while simultaneously braiding in threads of his gender expression, partnership, and youth. Arranged in patchwork fashion (several essays were previously published), this intimate tapestry of a family includes numerous anecdotes about many of Belc’s formative moments and experiences, including his early years as a girl in Rockaway Beach participating in Irish dance and playing whiffle ball with siblings. “I love my brothers,” writes the author of those times, “but I am mad they got to be boys.” Among other strands, Belc discusses his complex relationship with his father (“I always thought my father wished I was a boy, but by the time I was it was too late”), the history of breasts, and his bewilderment when the adoption papers for he and his partner’s son listed him as “the natural mother of the child,” a phrase that “made me cringe. It made me rage. My relationship with Samson could be natural without my having to stand up in court and say I was a mother.” Belc smoothly weaves in scientific and social research, even if the timeline isn’t always easy to follow. But such is life: abstract, nonlinear, unable to be forced into tidy compartments. At times, the use of third person is excessive, a literary garnish to a story that is already rich in content. Nonetheless, Belc develops a candid, gritty, tender story that should garner empathy and understanding regardless of a reader’s background. In this multilayered narrative, augmented with black-and-white photos, the author successfully holds readers’ attention all the way through the last poignant line.
With vivid rawness, Belc paints an impressionist mural of what it means to be a parent while also birthing his true self.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64009-438-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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