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jugglingpup's review against another edition
5.0
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I got an ARC of this book. (OH EM GEE. CLEIS PRESS FOUND ME. If you told 13 year old me that I would be found by Cleis Press, I would have died from happiness.)
I went to a poetry writing workshop in October. The workshop was hosted by two trans/gender non conforming (TGNC) people. Outside of wanting to hear one of the presenters talk forever because her voice was mesmerizing and having a low-key immediate squish on the other, I got some really good knowledge out of it. The most important was about how one of the first things that a TGNC person needs to decide if the book is for other TGNC people or for cis people. The other is there is really a lack of media that isn’t solely about physical transitions.
This memoir is both for trans and cis people. It is so rare there will be a book that I feel isn’t just trans 101. This is not trans 101, but it does cover some really basic things. Part of the basic comes from the cis people around Ramirez. Ramirez is this hardcore scientist and possibly the queen of spiders. I think her knowledge would be intimidating to a lot of cis people, except she has this way of talking and explaining things that is just accessible. That is the biggest theme of the book: Ramirez is a teacher and mentor. Everything else just is another aspect of her and how she became this wonderful human being. The more I read about the work she does, the more I wish that I had gone into biology instead of psychology. I just want her to be my professor. I would sex spiders for years to learn from her.
Partnoy does an amazing job of making a transition accessible to cis people. A lot of cis people can’t wrap their heads around transitioning. It can feel like an alien concept. The way that Partnoy asks questions and does her homework makes her endearing and an ally that I would want to have in my life. It happens much too often that a trans person is exposed, ridiculed, or just talked over when they are interviewed. Their experiences are dismissed. Partnoy never dismisses Ramirez. There are a few times that she clearly brings the topic back to herself and her experiences. Whenever she does it, it very much reads as “I think I understand, this is how it relates to my life” or “I never thought about that, as a cis person my life was like this”. Partnoy was able to do some of the relating for readers which made it feel a bit easier to just understand and accept, even if the intimate knowledge of the topic wasn’t there.
So this book is clearly for everyone. There are some pretty amazing trans references and ideas, but they were accessible. The trans 101 was kept to a basic since the book was not about Ramirez’s physical transition. It was not the nuts and bolts of the situation. Instead it was about a full person. So I have to commend the authors for being able to humanize and explain an often difficult topic in a way that isn’t overly simplistic for others in the community or overly focused on just one aspect of a transition for cis people who already largely focus on physical transitions as the end all be all of being trans. (Before you start going “not all cis people”, understand that I have been openly trans for over a decade. I have been asked about my genitalia by bosses, coworkers, and strangers. It comes back to the physical aspects so, so often. So it means even more that this book barely touches on those aspects.)
While this book goes into some of the physical transition stuff, it was not the focus. There was a lot of focus on happiness. One of my favorite trans people and I had a conversation about the idea of trans people having to be depressed and about trans happiness. How there is this really big pressure to conform to this one story of trauma and torment to be the right kind of trans for cis people. She, of course, said it more eloquently. Ramirez makes the point over and over again that she was happy before the transition. She is just happier now. She never expected to be able to transition, but she was happy. SHE WAS HAPPY. Seeing a trans person express happiness is just so powerful in a way that is hard to describe to anyone who isn’t trans. If you are trans, you already get it. Ramirez did not follow THE trans story. The one where she was trapped in a boy’s body and always knew something was off, so she hated herself. She didn’t have to transition or die. There are a lot of people who have that story, my story looks a lot like that. Those people are valid and need support too. But seeing the differences between people opens a whole world of what trans really is. Trans people can be happy. Trans people can be depressed. Trans people can transition. Trans people may never transition. There is so much variation in the trans community that is ignored outside of the trans community (and partially within it as well). Having Ramirez say something as simple as “I was happy” is just mind blowing. The title just reinforces this idea that a transition doesn’t have to be this medical emergency or life saving surgery (it ALWAYS comes down to one surgery), it can be a conscious choice to be happy. It can be a conscious choice to be who you really are. Not every trans person transitions medically. Not every trans person who transitions medically takes the same steps. Ramirez even covers some of that with talk of her bottom surgery. She mentions that not everyone goes back for part two. She does not diminish those people, she just chose a different path for herself.
My transition happened much younger than Ramirez. That doesn’t make her transition any less valid. I have friends that haven’t transitioned until later in life. I have friends that started hormone blockers in their teens. There is no right path to transition. Ramirez and Partnoy cover this in such detail. They references other memoirs. They reference more scientific work. They make this more than just one person’s story. They included interviews of people. I was a bit concerned at first, but it really made the book so much deeper and more complete for me.
I really can’t say enough about this book. Everything from the people who wrote it down to the formatting was just incredible. I should probably stop now or I will start ranting about the chapter length and how it just made the story something that was easy to pick up and put down in an inviting way or how the way pictures were put in the chapters where they were relevant made them seem like they fit the story better, instead of a big chunk in the middle in color.
tl;dr this book is incredible. Read the book instead of my review.
I got an ARC of this book. (OH EM GEE. CLEIS PRESS FOUND ME. If you told 13 year old me that I would be found by Cleis Press, I would have died from happiness.)
I went to a poetry writing workshop in October. The workshop was hosted by two trans/gender non conforming (TGNC) people. Outside of wanting to hear one of the presenters talk forever because her voice was mesmerizing and having a low-key immediate squish on the other, I got some really good knowledge out of it. The most important was about how one of the first things that a TGNC person needs to decide if the book is for other TGNC people or for cis people. The other is there is really a lack of media that isn’t solely about physical transitions.
This memoir is both for trans and cis people. It is so rare there will be a book that I feel isn’t just trans 101. This is not trans 101, but it does cover some really basic things. Part of the basic comes from the cis people around Ramirez. Ramirez is this hardcore scientist and possibly the queen of spiders. I think her knowledge would be intimidating to a lot of cis people, except she has this way of talking and explaining things that is just accessible. That is the biggest theme of the book: Ramirez is a teacher and mentor. Everything else just is another aspect of her and how she became this wonderful human being. The more I read about the work she does, the more I wish that I had gone into biology instead of psychology. I just want her to be my professor. I would sex spiders for years to learn from her.
Partnoy does an amazing job of making a transition accessible to cis people. A lot of cis people can’t wrap their heads around transitioning. It can feel like an alien concept. The way that Partnoy asks questions and does her homework makes her endearing and an ally that I would want to have in my life. It happens much too often that a trans person is exposed, ridiculed, or just talked over when they are interviewed. Their experiences are dismissed. Partnoy never dismisses Ramirez. There are a few times that she clearly brings the topic back to herself and her experiences. Whenever she does it, it very much reads as “I think I understand, this is how it relates to my life” or “I never thought about that, as a cis person my life was like this”. Partnoy was able to do some of the relating for readers which made it feel a bit easier to just understand and accept, even if the intimate knowledge of the topic wasn’t there.
So this book is clearly for everyone. There are some pretty amazing trans references and ideas, but they were accessible. The trans 101 was kept to a basic since the book was not about Ramirez’s physical transition. It was not the nuts and bolts of the situation. Instead it was about a full person. So I have to commend the authors for being able to humanize and explain an often difficult topic in a way that isn’t overly simplistic for others in the community or overly focused on just one aspect of a transition for cis people who already largely focus on physical transitions as the end all be all of being trans. (Before you start going “not all cis people”, understand that I have been openly trans for over a decade. I have been asked about my genitalia by bosses, coworkers, and strangers. It comes back to the physical aspects so, so often. So it means even more that this book barely touches on those aspects.)
While this book goes into some of the physical transition stuff, it was not the focus. There was a lot of focus on happiness. One of my favorite trans people and I had a conversation about the idea of trans people having to be depressed and about trans happiness. How there is this really big pressure to conform to this one story of trauma and torment to be the right kind of trans for cis people. She, of course, said it more eloquently. Ramirez makes the point over and over again that she was happy before the transition. She is just happier now. She never expected to be able to transition, but she was happy. SHE WAS HAPPY. Seeing a trans person express happiness is just so powerful in a way that is hard to describe to anyone who isn’t trans. If you are trans, you already get it. Ramirez did not follow THE trans story. The one where she was trapped in a boy’s body and always knew something was off, so she hated herself. She didn’t have to transition or die. There are a lot of people who have that story, my story looks a lot like that. Those people are valid and need support too. But seeing the differences between people opens a whole world of what trans really is. Trans people can be happy. Trans people can be depressed. Trans people can transition. Trans people may never transition. There is so much variation in the trans community that is ignored outside of the trans community (and partially within it as well). Having Ramirez say something as simple as “I was happy” is just mind blowing. The title just reinforces this idea that a transition doesn’t have to be this medical emergency or life saving surgery (it ALWAYS comes down to one surgery), it can be a conscious choice to be happy. It can be a conscious choice to be who you really are. Not every trans person transitions medically. Not every trans person who transitions medically takes the same steps. Ramirez even covers some of that with talk of her bottom surgery. She mentions that not everyone goes back for part two. She does not diminish those people, she just chose a different path for herself.
My transition happened much younger than Ramirez. That doesn’t make her transition any less valid. I have friends that haven’t transitioned until later in life. I have friends that started hormone blockers in their teens. There is no right path to transition. Ramirez and Partnoy cover this in such detail. They references other memoirs. They reference more scientific work. They make this more than just one person’s story. They included interviews of people. I was a bit concerned at first, but it really made the book so much deeper and more complete for me.
I really can’t say enough about this book. Everything from the people who wrote it down to the formatting was just incredible. I should probably stop now or I will start ranting about the chapter length and how it just made the story something that was easy to pick up and put down in an inviting way or how the way pictures were put in the chapters where they were relevant made them seem like they fit the story better, instead of a big chunk in the middle in color.
tl;dr this book is incredible. Read the book instead of my review.
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