An engaging, frank true-life tale that, though not always happy, is certainly hopeful.
Marlowe’s (Under the Lion’s Paw, 2010, etc.) debut memoir offers a deeply honest account of what it was like growing up a boy in a girl’s body.
Marlowe, who calls himself Marti in his book, was born “Mary Ann” in Pittsburgh in 1932. Here, he chronicles the fascinating story of his growing up a transgender male, from his childhood with an abusive mother and stepfather in Pennsylvania to several years spent nearby under the care of a devoted aunt and uncle, all the way to his high school and post–high school years back under the watchful eye of his mother and a manipulative (second) stepfather. He then recalls his adult years: his dishonorable discharge from the Women in the Air Force for being gay, then a string of failed relationships, cross-country moves, lost jobs, family deaths, depressive episodes and struggles with alcoholism. Marlowe’s story is devastatingly honest. He speaks openly about knowing that he was the wrong gender when he was as young as 7: “I’m not a boy. But I am. I just look like a girl, because they make me wear dresses and long hair….Nobody knows what I am.” Marlowe also describes how the lack of awareness and understanding of transgenderism in America caused him to feel alienated in nearly every community—even into middle age—and hindered his ability to find a compatible romantic partner. His book is extremely well-written, and his earnest anecdotes of failed love—such as his decadeslong affair with a nun at Catholic boarding school—can be both heartbreaking and hilarious. While sometimes riddled with too many details and stories unrelated to his narrative about transgenderism, Marlowe’s book is relatable and candid, with the voice of a person too often oppressed and too little heard from.
An engaging, frank true-life tale that, though not always happy, is certainly hopeful.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490981116
Page Count: 362
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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