Provocative and illuminating—a winning follow-up to McBee’s acclaimed debut.
A journalist’s account of why he decided to train as a boxer and become the first transgender man to fight a cisgender man in Madison Square Garden.
McBee (Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man, 2014) began his transition to manhood at age 30. Although he loved the new coherence between his inner and outer selves, he was also aware that becoming a man also meant becoming an heir to toxic masculinity. He searched for “good men” to imitate until the day his girlfriend suggested that his real task was “to face [his] worst fears about who [he was]” rather than seeking outside role models. With her words in mind, he decided to take up boxing at a local New York gym to better understand the “brutal intimacies” of male relationships. He cleared his first inner hurdle by coming out to his trainers and earning their respect for his honesty. At the same time, the author also became “wary of [the] new…warrior-like ego” he saw emerge within himself. He then signed up to fight in a charity match at MSG, and he continued to work through his remaining fears about masculinity, many of which surfaced during sessions with a female boxer. She threatened him not only because she was a better fighter, but also because she forced him to grapple with his own internalized sexism and romanticized notions of manhood. Training with her eventually made him understand that he could actively rewrite inherited social scripts about masculinity. McBee also realized a core truth about men and boxing: Males seeking out other males to learn the art of fighting were not necessarily seeking blood or violence. Rather, they were looking for a bond by exposing vulnerabilities and learning to overcome their deficits within the protected space of the gym or boxing ring. In this lyrical, courageous book, the author eloquently probes his inner life as he searches for the meaning of gender identity in a world limited by binary thinking.
Provocative and illuminating—a winning follow-up to McBee’s acclaimed debut.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6874-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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