A Book Review: "Detransition, Baby" by Torrey Peters

In a turn of reading patterns, I have been exploring disrupting my flow (dare I say even onslaught) of self help books and adding in a novel or memoir in between. My best friend read ‘Detransition, Baby’ by Torrey Peters and gave me the book after with a nudge to read it.

In seeing every book list recap out there right now, it does seem to be at the top of the shelf for LGBTQ+ reads this 2021 year and I agree. I found the writing smart, captivating and I learned a lot with transgender characters at the center stage of this novel. And I heard it is going to be made into a TV series, I always like the books better.

You can pop over to goodreads to get a whole plot review of sorts and Ill do a tiny synopsis here and then talk more about what I loved from reading this book. So we meet Reese and Ames through the present moment and their backstories - the chapters move back and forth in time - through their relationship as women and then Ames detransitions to a man after they break up (well, sort of, he had already stopped taking the hormones but details, people). The third main character is Katrina, Ames’ boss AND lover who went through a divorce. She is cisgender and we meet her pregnant with Ames’ child. She has gone through a gnarly divorce and did not even know about Ames past as a woman as they were more in a casual thing turning into a love thing and he had not told her yet. UNTIL…he gets this grand idea that he and Katrina and Reese could raise this child together in a family style way to support dreams he knew Reese had to be a Mother, support Katrina in decision making and maintain her career focus and bring in women he loves deeply to become the Father he is not sure he can be.

Okay, so I did not keep that short. The plot follows along through this decision making process and the communication and inner thoughts between and within the main characters. Do they have the baby together? Guess you will have to read the book. This would be a great book club book, for sure.

I really loved this style of learning through written experience in a novel. Novels are so cool as you get to know the character and then fall in love with them, feel for them, almost experience with them if the writer can convey that connection - which I believe Torrey Peters did so well through dialogue and taking us into the past, present and future of each person. I often tend to read very theory heavy or even memoir heavy books and this novel had emotion, inner thought work, theory and a storyline to follow.

Quotes like these:

“Yes.” Reese nods. “I mean, they go through everything I go through as a trans woman. Divorce is a transition story. Of course, not all divorced women go through it. I’m talking about the ones who felt their divorce as a fall, or as a total reframing of their lives. The ones who have seen how the narratives given to them since girlhood have failed them, and who know there is nothing to replace it all. But who still have to move forward without investing in new illusions or turning bitter—all with no plan to guide them. That’s as close to a trans woman as you can get. Divorced women are the only people who know anything like what I know. And, since I don’t really have trans elders, divorced women are the only ones I think have anything to teach me, or who I care to teach in return.”

and

“The moms I knew when I was little didn't have to prove that it was okay to want a child. Sure, a lot of women I know wonder if they do want a child, but not why. It's assumed why. The question cis women get asked is: Why don't you want kids? And then they have to justify that. If I had been born cis, I would never even have had to answer these questions. I wouldn't have had to prove that I deserve my models of womanhood. But I'm not cis. I'm trans. And so until the day that I am a mother, I'm constantly going to have to prove that I deserve to be one. That it's not unnatural or twisted that I want a child's love. Why do I want to be a mother? After all those beautiful women I grew up with, the ones who chaperoned my classes on field trips, or made me lunch when I was at their house, or sewed costumes for all the little girls that I ice skated with — and you too, Katrina, for that matter — have to explain their feelings about motherhood, then, I'll explain mine. And do you know what I'll say? Ditto.”

A great and engaging read!