An intimate and clearly heartfelt memoir.
A transgender rights advocate’s account of how breaking with Orthodox Judaism helped her come to terms with her gender dysphoric daughter’s wish to transition.
When Lemay learned she was pregnant for the second time, she took an IntelliGender test that revealed she was carrying a boy. However, the child was born a girl, and the author and her husband named her Em. Stubborn and strong-willed, by age 2, her tantrums became as “epic” as her demands; she was, the author writes, a “force of nature.” Em later developed an obsession with a dog sweater, which became the only thing she wanted to wear to preschool. For a time, Lemay believed that Em, who insisted she was male, had entered into a tomboy rebel phase. Yet her odd behavior, which included barking like a dog when people tried to talk to her, also persisted. It was only after consulting with a social worker friend that Lemay began to consider the possibility that her child was actually showing signs of gender dysphoria. In the author’s parallel story about growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household, she recalls how her patriarchal faith sometimes left her longing to be free from the constraints of tradition. Her years at a female Orthodox seminary only confirmed that she could not willingly settle into a life where she would always be subservient to men and their ambitions. Empathizing with Em’s identity crisis, Lemay allowed her daughter to choose a boy’s name she could use around the house and present herself as a brother to two sisters on a family trip. Not long afterward, she and her husband allowed Em—who now went by the name Jacob—to transition into a happy, well-adjusted little boy. Compassionate, wise, and sensitively told, Lemay’s narrative offers moving portraits of a mother and family willing to embrace radical change in order to unconditionally support their child. It will be helpful to any parent experiencing a similar situation.
An intimate and clearly heartfelt memoir.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-544-96583-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
