Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - Transitions: A Mother's Journey

This graphic novel follows a mother's journey to acceptance after her child comes out as a trans man. I picked this up because the cover grabbed my eye and I enjoy trans stories, but it was a bit of a disappointment. The mother spends about 90% of the book rejecting her son's identity, deadnaming and misgendering him constantly. She makes his transition entirely about herself and what it means to her as his mother and what it says about her. When she finally does accept his identity, she almost does it begrudgingly and it takes a long time for her to correctly name and gender him. At the end, it feels like she pats herself on the back for her allyship...there wasn't any time given to a heartfelt and thoughtful acknowledgement of wrongdoing. It's wild how her son is basically a background character to the mother's internal dialogue. Even her husband felt like a more significant character than her actual child. Like, she was just a bad mom. I know this is a story that might be impactful for parents of trans kids who have also struggled with their child's identity, but I don't know, it didn't sit right with me. The story is also interspersed with random facts about gender diversity in the animal kingdom and in other cultures but it just feels performative. It also feels sad that the mother seems to rely on these examples for why trans identities are normal rather than just trusting the lived experience of her child. I don't know who I would recommend this to honestly, if anyone. It doesn't feel like it serves the trans community at all.

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amazelan's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

2.5

y a des messages vraiment importants, et je comprends l'intention derrière le fait de transmettre le cheminement d'une mère qui découvre que son enfant est trans.
mais
ça m'a donné envie de l'envoyer contre un mur, probablement parce que ça m'a rappelé le cheminement aussi beaucoup trop long de ma famille.

je pense que c'est + pertinent de faire des histoires avec les personnes trans comme personnages principaux que leur entourage, pour éviter la transphobie qui en découle. même si ça peut peut-être être utile pour les familles d'avoir ce genre de livre, je sais pas.

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cvl_1103's review

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challenging emotional hopeful informative tense fast-paced

4.0

4 stars. This book was a tough read but I think it tells a story we don’t see often. Often when we hear stories about parents rejecting their trans or queer children or not fully accepting it’s someone who is conservative and/or practices a non-accepting religion and those stories are important but there are others as well. This graphic novel tells the story of a mother who believes that she is liberal and open minded and struggles to accept that her son is trans. It’s hard to read a mother constantly misgendering their child but I do think that this graphic novel does depict that parents can change. I liked that this novel showed Alex (the main characters son) setting boundaries with his mother and sticking to them so that they could get to a place where their relationship was full of acceptance. The art in this book was also really great and I appreciated the addition of research throughout and resources at the end.

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bug_lightyear's review against another edition

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2.0

I just read this book and it makes me feel uncomfortable but I find it difficult pinning why.
It's a coming out story from the point of view of the mum of a transmasc guy, and it's all about the mum having difficulty taking the news 😐

I think part of it is the eternal question I have about some books: why is this author, that has no (obvious or publicly known) personal connection to the (very sensitive) subject, writing about it in the first place. She's not trans and has no trans kids, and writes about the mother of a young adult trans guy, and it really starts off quite badly with the mother misgendering her kid for about a year. Feels like cis people throwing themselves flowers for being so cool and accepting.

My mum said she could have written it and it seems like that was a good thing for her, so I guess some parents taking the news badly might benefit from it? But if I had to put a book in my parent's hands, it wouldn't be this one.

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therainbowshelf's review

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

Élodie doesn't shy away from showing her struggles to be a supportive parent when her late teens early20s child comes out as trans. Opening the book with information about gender, identity, and sexuality does a lot to show how far she has come since then. This is a meaningful read, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is having cognitive dissonance in supporting trans folks in their own lives.

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ashareads's review

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emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

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