leafcreep's profile picture

leafcreep's review

5.0
emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

I opened up this book not expecting to relate too heavily to it - and found myself wanting to read a second time after finishing it. The author makes several thought provoking points about the social 'role' of masculinity and the experiences he had as a trans person hit home. Even if you are not interested in sports (like myself) this was a wonderful and inspiring read.

7anooch's review

5.0

Nobody understands gender like trans people do.

Reading this a second time did not diminish the impact it had on me.
emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

“it took me a long time to realize that, for this lifetime, this thomas was enough” absolutely crying
graecoltraine's profile picture

graecoltraine's review

5.0
inspiring reflective fast-paced
soul_br's profile picture

soul_br's review

4.75
challenging emotional informative fast-paced

ari767's review

4.0
emotional informative reflective fast-paced
hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

This was honestly better than I was expecting! You should read this even if you're not someone who usually cares about masculinity or sports. I really enjoyed it - I felt myself become a more empathetic person through this. 

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sageofthe6pack's profile picture

sageofthe6pack's review

3.75
challenging inspiring reflective medium-paced
challenging reflective medium-paced

This is a memoir of a trans man who decides to enter into amateur boxing for more perspective into traditional masculinity and to understand parts of himself. Boxing is pretty far outside of my typical wheelhouse, even if queer books and gender studies is right in the middle of it. So this was quite an interesting look into the inside of that as someone with very little knowledge of that component going in. 

There is a lot in here obviously about masculinity at large but even more compelling to me was how it all (masculinity as well as the experience of boxing) tied into the author's life. As McBee is unpacking masculinity and his relationship to it, he's also analyzing relationships past and present, working though grief, and processing his childhood abuse. This was really well put together and had a lot of great insight. 

This book does focus on a limited scope of masculinity, but the author clearly states his position socially (as white and cis-passing) and acknowledges how it's a different experience from others. He doesn't go far into detail on a lot of these points nor does he dig far into the class differences that he describes in the boxing gyms. This is a memoir - it makes sense that the scope would be limited, but it would have been interesting to see a bit more about this especially since he did pull from academic sources at other points in the book (and I enjoyed the discussion that he had in those sections).

Overall, I had a good time with this. It was well-written, interesting, and insightful. It grapples with a lot of big questions about masculinity, identity, and personal history in a really compelling way.

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