Book No. 48 of 2021
I really enjoyed Detransition, Baby, which dives deeper into trans identity and culture than any book I’ve read before. Peters masterfully raises a lot of questions and teases at the complex mess that is womanhood: societally coded femininity, laden with paradoxes and traps. She also perpendicularly layers in the dynamic of WOC identity, astonishingly demonstrating how yes, it has parallels to queer identity, but cannot be extrapolated like oppression algebra. There is something both cringeworthy and relatable about an Asian American cis woman clumsily attempting to empathize with the trans characters in the novel—on the one hand, yikes, but on the other hand, been there. (Yet another reminder that practicing empathy and working on allyship means being vulnerable and uncomfortable and at times messing up, unintentionally hurting others.)
One of my favorite monologues in the novel is that of one character explaining how traditional heterosexual wedding practices are bizarrely kinky rituals: she’s. not. wrong. The entire book is like this: hilarious and direct and raw and a little painful.
Similar Reads
I was reminded of Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji.
“Hot mess knocking around NYC” narratives always remind me of Min Jin Lee’s Free Food for Millionaires and also Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility.
Some parallels to Normal People by Sally Rooney.