A fresh, daring exploration of lived experience.
A trans woman reflects on her changing identity in this revelatory memoir.
Scott-Clary, a computer programmer and the editor-in-chief of publisher Hybrid Ink, recounts a long transition in the form of a dialogue between herself and an inquisitive alter ego named “ally.” She offers a complex and psychologically fraught story about “past me”: Matthew, a gay teen with an insensitive father and homophobic stepfather who immersed himself in the furry community and developed an aversion to messy, real-life sex, preferring phone sex or typing out fantasies with online partners. A stable relationship with a gay man developed into marriage, which included polyamory. Scott-Clary wrestled with bipolar disorder, tics and balance problems caused by medications, and a dissociative episode that led to a suicide attempt. The author had gender reassignment surgery in her late 20s that made her feel more comfortable in her own skin. This book, which began as an interactive online writing project, is a multigenre work that includes poetry, snippets of fiction, artwork, and many original musical compositions. Most of the text consists of autobiographical conversation, which meanders at times, especially in sections in which the author talks about her writing process. Still, Scott-Clary is a talented writer who conveys her inner world in a way that’s cleareyed yet powerfully immediate, from the helplessness of a suicide attempt (“It was like the rush of coming to your senses after a nightmare, the pulling forward and the re-anchoring, the flood of adrenaline in preparation for flight”) to her postoperative blossoming (“The first time I looked in the mirror and saw the trace of femininity. The softening of skin. The first ‘she’ on the street. The first ‘ma’am’ on the phone. Hell, the first time dressing feminine”). Scott-Clary isn’t afraid to take creative risks, and they pay off in an often engrossing portrait.
A fresh, daring exploration of lived experience.Pub Date: June 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-948743-15-0
Page Count: 476
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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