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Summary
Summary
Ben, Parker, Lucas, Nadia are four patients of Florida's Dr. Charles Garramonepreparing to receive surgery to masculinize their chests on the same day. In the following years, they, along with more than a hundred others across the country, opened up to the award-winning professor of gender and sexuality Arlene Stein about how they conceive of their identities and sexuality, how they decided to transition, how they were received by their families and communities, and the joys and challenges they continue to face after transitioning. Weaving together the history of the transgender movement and the personal journeys of these transgender individuals, Stein sheds light on how transgender men tell their stories, make sense of their lives, and build communities in the face of skepticism, confusion, ignorance, and, often, violence. Because despite any progress we've made as a culture in accepting alternative identities, Ben and the others Stein meets continue to live in a world that is dangerous to them.
In this moving, raw, intimate book about the lives of transgender men, Stein reveals how transgender men as a group, largely invisible in previous decades, today exert a significant impact on business, medicine, culture, and have drastically reshaped how we as a nation conceive of gender, sex, and identity. In so doing, Stein has also created an essential resource on female to male transitioning- for parents, educators, friends, and those who question their identities and seek further information.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Stein (Reluctant Witnesses) tracks the rapid evolution of gender identity in this provocative group portrait of trans men. The book opens in the waiting room of a South Florida plastic surgery clinic, where four patients are scheduled to undergo "top surgery" (chest masculinization) on the same day. For the next year Stein follows the four subjects as they recover from surgery and grow accustomed to their new bodies, interviewing their friends, families, and acquaintances. While in the past passing as cisgender was the goal, Stein finds these days people are just as likely to reject the gender binary outright and claim trans as their own identity. Of Stein's four subjects, Lucas makes a point of coming out as trans, Parker is interested in passing in the traditional sense, Nadia chooses to change her body but not her gender, and Ben is still figuring out where he is most comfortable (meanwhile he uses social media to keep people updated, posting a photo of the bandages and tubes on his chest). The book also notes the prominence of reality television and social media in creating space for more gender identities to flourish by making "the personal eminently more public." Stein posits that trans identity as it exists right now in younger people is less an act of survival and more an act of self-reinvention. Though Stein finds no tidy conclusions, her book succeeds in documenting what it means to be trans today. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A new sociological study on transgender individuals and their experience transitioning.In her latest, gender theorist Stein (Sociology/Rutgers Univ.; Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, Their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness, 2014, etc.) follows the lives of four individuals who have gone through the process of transitioning from female to male. The author states that her book is a "group portrait of those who choose to remake their bodies and lives using the tools they have at their disposal." Stein spent considerable time with her subjects, Ben, Parker, Lucas, and Nadia, each one existing at different levels of the transgender spectrum. Ben, who grew up in a highly supportive environment, never identified as a woman; he had large breasts and struggled on a daily basis with his body image. As a result, he started hormonal treatments and eventually underwent top surgery to fully transition from female to male. Parker is a prototypical Californian, though he is from Virginia. Muscular and blond, he referred to himself as a "gurl" and dressed as a tomboy. He was outspoken and refused to wear the clothes his parents wanted him to wear as a girl. Lucas' identity fits near the intersection of male and femalei.e., he identifies neither as a man nor a woman but rather "somewhere masculine of center." Finally, Nadia wishes to modify her body but still wants to be recognized as a woman. Stein takes readers on each one of these individual's incredible journeys, shedding a rigorous, respectful, and highly studied light on the experience of transgender individuals today. For example, "transgender men," she writes, "are not simply retrieving the male that resides within; they're also creating themselves." This significant book provides medical, sociological, and psychological information that can only serve to educate those lacking understanding and awareness of an entire community of individuals who deserve representation.A stellar exploration of the complexities and limitations of gender. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Approximately 1.4 million Americans identify as transgender, sociologist Stein reports. Her illuminating book examines the lives of three of these, Ben, Parker, and Lucas, all of whom are in transition from female to male and all of whom are in the process of having surgery to masculinize their chests. Joining them is a fourth subject, Nadia, who is a bit of an outlier: a gender-bending butch lesbian, she is not in transition but wishes to have her breasts removed to appear more masculine. Stein uses these four lives as context for a larger, more expansive examination of the condition of being transgender in America at a time, she notes, when notions of gender are changing, and transgender persons are more visible than ever, thanks in part to the internet. Part history, part sociology, part group portrait, Stein's book is an accessible, thoroughly researched, and well-written examination of a circumstance still noted for its complexities, inviting searching discussions of the meanings of gender and masculinity. Happily, Unbound will bring much needed clarity to such discussions.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
AMERICAN PRISON: A Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment, by Shane Bauer. (Penguin, $18.) Bauer, a Mother Jones journalist, worked undercover as a guard at a private prison in rural Louisiana for months before he was discovered. This book, one of the Book Review's 10 best of 2018, is an expansion of an article detailing the abuses he witnessed, damning an industry in which inmates are commodities. CHERRY, by Nico Walker. (Vintage, $16.95.) An Iraq war medic begins robbing banks to finance his drug habit. This debut novel offers a sobering portrait of the opioid crisis in the United States and the absence of adequate support for veterans, which Walker renders in lyric, vivid prose: His descriptions of dope-sickness, heartbreak and grisly attacks are arresting, and his dialogue inventive. UNBOUND: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity, by Arlene Stein. (Vintage, $16.95.) For a year Stein, a sociologist, followed four patients at a Florida clinic known for its gender affirmation procedures. Stein goes to great lengths to explore the psychological, emotional and social aspects of transitioning, and is frank about her own preconceptions. The resulting book is earnest and optimistic. THE TRAITOR'S NICHE, by Ismail Kadare. Translated by John Hodgson. (Counterpoint, $16.95.) First published in 1978, this allegorical novel recalls Ottoman-era Albania. In Istanbul, the imperial capital, the severed head of a former pasha sits in a dish of honey, guarded by an impotent man; the head soon becomes the anchor of the story. Meanwhile, the province of Albania is clamoring for independence. Our reviewer, Jason Goodwin, praised "this riveting novel," which unfolds "in brilliant, laconic, grimly comic fashion." THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic, by Benjamin Carter Hett. (St. Martin's Griffin, $17.99.) A timely book explains the moral collapse that allowed Hitler to ascend to power, with implications for present times. "We take for granted that the Germans of the 1930s were quite different from ourselves," our reviewer, Timothy Snyder, wrote. "The opposite is the case." MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION, by Ottessa Moshfegh. (Penguin, $16.) The beautiful central character of this novel hopes that a long period of self-induced sleep will bring about a transformation. Moshfegh's writing is darkly comic, tracing how the heroine uses a stupefying combination of medications to overcome her grief and alienation from the world around her.
Library Journal Review
Sociologist Stein (Rutgers Univ.; The Stranger Next Door) invites readers to learn about the experience of those on the transmasculine spectrum. The story of Ben-a wakeboarder, sports photographer, and political organizer from Maine-structures the narrative. Readers also meet Parker, Lucas, and Nadia: three other individuals who underwent chest masculinization surgery on the same day and at the same clinic as Ben. Stein's decision to find her research participants in a clinic waiting room does mean the book is structured around transition. However, Stein allows each subject room to define for themselves what that journey has meant. While three of the four main figures identify on the transmasculine spectrum, the fourth participant, Nadia, is comfortable as a butch lesbian, who also has her breasts removed. Stein provides context for these stories by drawing on interviews with clinicians and a range of secondary literature. Unlike many outsider examinations of trans lives, Stein attends to the material vulnerabilities of her research participants rather than treating them as a subject of abstract debate. VERDICT This thoughtful study centers the lives and experiences of trans men in the millennial cohort. It will be of interest to trans and cis readers alike.-Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.