A brief but powerful and affecting book on the struggles of the trans community.
A trans author presents a discussion about being trans in a cis world.
Anyone can be trans, from entertainers to cashiers to members of one’s family, notes Radclyffe. Why, then, he asks, has discourse around this topic “become a pinball machine” in which trans people are the ball, ricocheting against the walls? Radclyffe asserts that it’s partly a matter of perspective. Some voices are simply louder, he notes—journalism, politics, and religion are largely cisgender domains. Using his own personal experience, wit, and enthusiasm, the author guides his readers to viewpoints that may be new to them. On the subject of trans kids competing in sports, he invites readers into the mind of a child on a soccer team. The child has body dysmorphia but is happy and at peace with her teammates. To ban her from playing, the author says, means only considering the feelings of cis people who feel threatened. At another point, the author explains that he didn’t transition from one sex to another, but “changed my body to become itself.” Overall, Radclyffe presents an empathetic and insistent work that effectively brings clarity to several topics for people who might lack it. For example, he uses an analogy of sheep in pens to illustrate a “binary world, where the two sexes are separated off from each other. There is no migration, there are no gates between the fields, and the fences never move.” He points out that such thinking is limiting (“Why can’t we just have full run of the countryside?”) and driven by misogyny, and he clearly expresses his belief that all feminists should embrace trans rights, because the “mythical hierarchy of female weakness / inferiority and male strength / superiority can only exist if the two sexes remain separate.” He also notes the many gender identities to choose from beyond the binary male/female option (Radclyffe posits that there are between 72 and 93). In addition, the book contextualizes such often-misunderstood topics as gender therapy and gender-affirming surgery.
A brief but powerful and affecting book on the struggles of the trans community.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9798987019979
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Unbound Edition Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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