Reviews with content warning for Domestic abuse - Detransition, Baby

Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

168 reviews

leahslitlibrary's review against another edition

Ames did not detransition because of violence, but because that violence lead him to believe he was only “dressing up” as a woman, and that felt very transphobic. This was really disappointing because I felt the book had so much going for it in the beginning.

Overall, I would give this book 2 stars, I enjoyed most of the book and it is very well written, but the ending was very ignorant and changed my opinion on this book as a whole.

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bookwormbi's review

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challenging funny informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Whatever I feel about this book, it is a fascinating read. I have a counter argument for every opinion I have about the book, which makes it very difficult to boil down my thoughts into something that makes sense. To me, this book is what happens when a white trans woman is terrified of writing the trans equivalent of Girls, and then, inevitably, writes the trans equivalent of Girls. This is most obvious in the book’s treatment of race and identity politics. It took me a moment to figure out whether Peters was a self aware antiracist white writer writing white characters who were clumsy about race, or if she herself was clumsy about race. (Spoiler alert: it’s the latter.) Katrina is the mouthpiece for the racial considerations that Reese and Ames sidestep, but it just got exhausting to listen to her constantly fighting with clueless white people. To be clear, the concerns Katrina brings up are important and I appreciate Peters’s attempt to bring a different perspective into her chronicle of Ames and Reese’s privileged experience of transness, but as a person of color, it hurt my heart to imagine Katrina having this fight with Ames and Reese for the rest of her life. At no point does the narrative acknowledge the emotional labor Katrina is putting into this whole experience not just as a woman, but as a woman of color. Reese and Ames then marshal their trans experiences against her, and it just turns into this very futile game of oppression Olympics in which Peters, try as she might to detach herself from the outcome, ultimately lands her sympathies with the white women.

I got the impression that much of what I disliked about Detransition, Baby was Peters’s attempt to be write a story that could ostensibly be for all trans women from a very narrow perspective, instead of owning that narrowness. The best parts of the book—the Sex and the City Problem, the juvenile elephants, the journeys of Reese and Ames’s transitions and detransition and the dissolution of their relationship—were the parts where Peters wrote as a white trans woman for white trans women. In the wider book landscape, there are very few trans stories, and even less stories about trans women, and I understand Peters’s desire to try to universalize her experience a little bit. To her credit, she rarely tries to speak for trans women of color (although she certainly speaks for cis women of color via Katrina), and much of the discussion about race and racism seems to be a well-intentioned attempt to telegraph her awareness of her privilege, so people don’t say things like what I’m saying right now. To be frank, I wish this book could be the trans version of one of the thousands of TV shows that centers cishet white men and doesn’t trouble itself to think about anybody else. Peters is not the first queer or trans writer whose anxiety over whether or not Twitter would call them racist I could feel through the page. I’m tired of it, frankly. I am a trans person of color, I know I am exactly who Peters is afraid of, and I understand why. I can see a version of this book that I dislike because there are no people of color in it and the characters’ racial insensitivities go unchallenged. But to be honest? I think I’d respect that version of the book a bit more.

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lorenag5's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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sarahfa's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

Such a strong book from the very first page. Torrey Peters is a genius, and I want to read everything she has written and will write. And she is working on making Detransition, Baby into a show or movie!

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m1923's review

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emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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alixcallender's review

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

To me, the point of this book is not to proselytize or morally educate, but rather to present opinions and feelings and experiences that are messy and different from your own. This is an honest reflection of what it is to be a person, flawed and singular and wonderful.

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sofipitch's review

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated

4.5

The book was really good, I adored the writing style. Any writing style that sounds like a person talking to me is deeply addictive, even more if the narrator is funny. The characters also felt like real people, and the decisions they made were not always the best, but that is what I enjoyed. I think they only thing I didn't quite believe is their relationship to each other, especially Katrina. I didn't see what Ames or Reese saw in her beyond her obvious role in the story. I liked a lot of the flashbacks and other musings more than I did the plot the book was named after (but this is also likely personal bc pregnancy is a bit squicky to me). I feel like I could read a book of Reese ordering take out and doing her laundry though

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