An emotional, engaging, and informative look at the real-life struggles and triumphs of trans people.
A collection of statistics and personal stories from people within the trans community.
After years of research, Boylan, the parent of a transgender young adult, and Kirby, a therapist specializing in gender-diverse teens, have assembled a collection meant to both educate and inspire. Accounts from the transgender community and their parents—covering issues such as identity, coping with familial rejection, etc.—mix with more encyclopedic information, such as the definitions of terms like biological sex and gender. Occasional graphics feature answers to questions such as, “How would you describe gender dysphoria in 10 words or less?” The authors explore all aspects of the transgender journey, from the idea that not all “gender-diverse” people feel the need to medically transition to becoming an ally. Each section begins with an excerpt from Rula Sinara’s Just Embrace, while occasional boxes feature “Thoughts from a Therapist…” that offer a professional’s advice for parents (on teens exploring gender diversity, for example, or desiring a legal name change). The final section includes the results from two surveys in which 150 additional participants answered questions like, “What has been the hardest part of your gender journey?” Boylan and Kirby approach the subject with openness and compassion, exploring not only the basics behind the trans experience, but also more peripheral topics, like autism (which is common in the trans community) and religion (which is often a tricky topic for trans people and their families). But the true emotional impact occurs when the authors hand over the stage to those who are trans: “They want to erase us. They say they hate the sin and love the sinner as they silently watch us die. And the reason is that we make them uncomfortable because we are different, and they could never be. And that is our superpower.” With an extensive list of resources, as well as intimate anecdotes, this anthology could prove to be a true lifeline for trans youth and adults.
An emotional, engaging, and informative look at the real-life struggles and triumphs of trans people.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9798218489502
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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