Balls: A Memoir by Chris Edwards, Greenleaf Book Group Press, $24.95
This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel, Flatiron Books, $25.99
As the subject of transgenderism continues to splash across electronic media, the literary world has also been keeping up to speed on this provocative, controversial, and essential issue. Caitlyn Jenner has a memoir coming out this spring, though she has retreated somewhat from the spotlight since coming out publicly in 2015, and the 2016 cancellation of her reality television series I Am Cait due to low ratings. For interested readers and those considering or already on the journey, thankfully there continues to be no shortage of reading material on gender transition, told from a variety of perspectives in both fiction and nonfiction forms.
Transgender Boston-area public speaker Chris Edwards has produced Balls, a powerful memoir with a message of hope and encouragement. His book describes some of the 28 surgeries he received to become the man he is today, including several harrowing chapters detailing urination issues he experienced with a fabricated penis created from his own biology. Now that he could "pee standing up," chronic nervousness and shyness were overshadowed by more urgent physical hurdles as more genital adjustments needed to be made. But that is just one example of Edwards' ability to turn a physical challenge into a reflective moment, and a reminder of what the journey means for a transgendered person. "My gender identity is not defined by what's between my legs," he writes.
Edwards retraces his life growing up in the Boston suburbs and becoming increasingly frustrated with the gender confusion he felt. Upon his college graduation, he realized he "couldn't continue pretending to be a girl much longer; keeping up my act was exhausting." While medical experts threw out terms like "gender dysphoria" and his parents wondered if he wasn't "just gay," Edwards knew the odyssey toward realizing his full self, physically and mentally, would be a somewhat solitary one �" in the beginning, at least.
With a conversational tone and plenty of wit and crisp honesty, the Armenian author lays bare the intimate details of his transition from Kristin to Chris, taking readers on an arduous journey through endless therapy sessions, the physical pain and resultant glee from the many surgical and microsurgical alterations (such as phalloplasty) he endured ("from 2002 to 2007, I had surgery 22 times"), the psychological trials of becoming a man, of coming out to friends and family (and former collegiate classmates), the author's intelligent explanation of the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, and his emergence as a courageous, empowering transgender community advocate. Though the book relies perhaps too heavily on the physical aspects of gender transition and less on the inner psychological experience, Edward's memoir is a breezily written, accessible, and compelling journal of personal change, identity, and rebirth.
Novelist Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is concerns the modern Walsh-Adams family, who have a full house with five boys, the youngest of whom, quirky Claude, begins to struggle with his young identity at age 3, when he decides he wants to be female. Much discussion ensues between parents and Claude's older brothers, all of whom Frankel paints with precision and depth. Claude becomes "Poppy" in school, and this change brings safety, solidarity, honesty, and identity to the surface. A relocation to Seattle does little to alleviate the tension, which boils over once Poppy is outed.
If Frankel's well-written, thoughtful domestic drama seems to be crafted from an experienced hand, it was. The author herself is bringing up a transgendered child, born male, who is now in second grade, and who loves her mother's new book!