An engaging, frank true-life tale that, though not always happy, is certainly hopeful.
Marlowe’s (Under the Lion’s Paw, 2010, etc.) debut memoir offers a deeply honest account of what it was like growing up a boy in a girl’s body.
Marlowe, who calls himself Marti in his book, was born “Mary Ann” in Pittsburgh in 1932. Here, he chronicles the fascinating story of his growing up a transgender male, from his childhood with an abusive mother and stepfather in Pennsylvania to several years spent nearby under the care of a devoted aunt and uncle, all the way to his high school and post–high school years back under the watchful eye of his mother and a manipulative (second) stepfather. He then recalls his adult years: his dishonorable discharge from the Women in the Air Force for being gay, then a string of failed relationships, cross-country moves, lost jobs, family deaths, depressive episodes and struggles with alcoholism. Marlowe’s story is devastatingly honest. He speaks openly about knowing that he was the wrong gender when he was as young as 7: “I’m not a boy. But I am. I just look like a girl, because they make me wear dresses and long hair….Nobody knows what I am.” Marlowe also describes how the lack of awareness and understanding of transgenderism in America caused him to feel alienated in nearly every community—even into middle age—and hindered his ability to find a compatible romantic partner. His book is extremely well-written, and his earnest anecdotes of failed love—such as his decadeslong affair with a nun at Catholic boarding school—can be both heartbreaking and hilarious. While sometimes riddled with too many details and stories unrelated to his narrative about transgenderism, Marlowe’s book is relatable and candid, with the voice of a person too often oppressed and too little heard from.
An engaging, frank true-life tale that, though not always happy, is certainly hopeful.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490981116
Page Count: 362
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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