Americans have been slow to acknowledge trans identities. It may reflect our lack of education, as gender nonconformity is nothing new and exists in nature and in other cultures. The male seahorse carries the babies and yet we blanch at the image of a pregnant trans man. Americans debate the mental health of trans people while Indigenous tribes recognize difference by celebrating it, giving the name berdache to gender nonconforming members. (Since 1990 the preferred term is two-spirit.)
Fortunately, we have a slew of books about trans identities that offer to fill in the gaps. Here are a few and what they taught me.
1.
After a military couple adopt twin boys, they discover that one of them gravitates towards stereotypically girly clothes and interests. She insists from a young age that she is a girl. Wary, they later accept that their daughter was born in the wrong body and allow her to begin gender reassignment surgery. The local community is horrible about Nicole. The family endures harassment on their journey to completion.
This is an excellent example of immersion journalism. The author spent four years with the family and makes it all feel right. A science writer, she also analyzes the often ignored data and biological studies surrounding this issue.
2.
This is an excellent memoir about a boisterous city family. In addition to a trans son, the family adopts a teenager and lives a colorful life with two parents and five kids. They find more acceptance in liberal New York than Nicole’s family does in Maine. One scene is telling, though. While taking a road trip to Niagara Falls, the author begins to panic that her masculine-presenting son still has a female passport. She imagines being turned away or worse. It is a moment when you realize why global acceptance is needed for trans people to live safely. To see it through a mother’s eyes is especially touching.
3.
This is a middling offer to the trans fiction canon. Ames is a detransitioned trans woman who impregnates her boss, Katrina. Ambivalent to play father, Ames invites her ex, Reese, to co-parent the child.
There are some really good parts of this story, as well as others that are desultory and self-indulgent. I wish the editor had stood their ground and rejected chapters like the lengthy one in which Reese and Katrina create a baby registry together.
If you only read one piece of trans fiction, I suggest the excellent Felix Ever After over this.
Books Smitten 