A review by laura_sackton
Pretty: A Memoir by KB Brookins

In a lot of ways it is a very straightforward memoir of trans coming of age. Brookins writes about their girlhood, their fraught relationship with their parents, the ways masculinity was taught to them, the ways they took on butch identity in their teens and 20s, and the toxic masculine traits they learned/adopted when they were assembling their butch identity. They write about all the struggles they’ve had to be a Black transmasc nonbinary person in the world, coming to love themself and their body. The heart of the book is about wrestling with masculinity, unlearning toxic masculinity, and learning to build their own new masculinity unbeholden to anything they were taught. 

I really appreciated how they talked about the mistakes they made, how they perpetrated abuse, how they hurt women and people they loved in this cycle of pain and violence, as they were trying to be a man as they were taught, even when they were identifying as a butch lesbian. I found it so honest and painful to read about their past relationships and what it took for them to leave them and find healthy ways to express themself. 

I did find parts of this somewhat dry. They end a lot of chapters with these very broad political statements, like “all trans people deserve health care." Which, yes, of course, but it felt sort of…tacked on. They places where they were trying to make these grand sweeping points instead of just writing their story were less engaging. When they were just writing about what happened to them and how it felt, that’s when the memoir shone the most. Loved the poems!