Review by aliciae08 - Detransition, Baby

emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

I just finished Detransition, Baby, and I’m still sussing out my thoughts.

The conclusion I’ve come up with is complicated—as it should be, as the characters are complicated.

What I loved:

the exploration of womanhood, motherhood, gender expression and queerness;
The imperfectness of the characters so that the reader knew that no one person’s identity is monolithic. It is entirely one’s own;
The idea that we can create our own family
The exploration of why the characters are the way that they are (especially Ames).

What I didn’t like:

Others have mentioned the clumsiness of race within this, and how the inclusion of Katrina being the one major character of color might be a metaphor for how the white trans experience isn’t the only one. It doesn’t work for me fir so many reasons, but the first one being that whenever she brings race up it feels like someone who hasn’t actually experienced being a minority, and because any attempts at relating with Katrina by Reese/Ames are shut down.
Some of the writing, as beautiful as it is, was over the top for me. I was sometimes waiting to get to the end of a chapter and I hate feeling like that.

What I found challenging:

Reese said things about womanhood and the need to feel delicate (particularly when she was with Stanley and the Cowboy) that I wholeheartedly couldn’t relate to, but have to admit that at some point in my own life defined my own perception of what it means to be woman and the need for men to view me as someone worthy of being taken care of/defended etc. I think it’s easy for people (especially those looking for an excuse to hate this book) to use it as a way to accuse people like Reese, at worse, of cosplaying womanhood, when that’s not what’s happening.
Ames’, before their transition to Amy, misogyny and further internalized misogyny was hard to read, mostly because I grieved for that character.

Content Warnings