A heartfelt examination of raising a boy who wants to be a girl.
A memoir about raising a gender-creative child.
Like most parents, Duron and her husband had certain expectations about who their sons would grow up to be, but when their younger son, C.J., discovered and fell in love with Barbie, they had to slowly begin changing their ideas. C.J. liked dolls, his favorite colors were pink and purple, and he enjoyed dressing up in girls’ clothes—all atypical behaviors for a 3-year-old male. Having grown up with a brother who is homosexual, Duron was on the lookout for potentially gay behavior in C.J. It was only as C.J. continued to cross-dress and then announced one day to his father that when he grew up, he was going to be a girl, that Duron realized she might have a gender-nonconforming child. The author honestly and humorously expresses the delight and dismay her family lived through as they watched and adjusted to the increasingly interesting and sometimes very awkward moments of life with C.J. Like all good parents, Duron and her husband didn't squelch C.J's desires but encouraged him to become who he was meant to be, allowing him to have princess-themed birthday parties and "girl" toys from Santa Claus while ignoring the looks and comments of neighbors and the parents of classroom friends. As the first few years passed and C.J.'s behavior continued on the gender-nonconforming spectrum, Duron searched for information on how to safely raise an LGBTQ child. When she couldn't find as much help as she needed, she decided to blog about her experiences in order to connect with and help others in this same situation. Many decisions still lie ahead—for example, hormone therapy and/or surgery for C.J., as well as the need to address the bullying both sons have received—and the author tackles these issues head-on with intelligence and compassion.
A heartfelt examination of raising a boy who wants to be a girl.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7704-3772-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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