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What Becomes You (American Lives)by Aaron Raz Link
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:“Being a man, like being a woman, is something you have to learn,” Aaron Raz Link remarks. Few would know this better than the coauthor of What Becomes You, who began life as a girl named Sarah and twenty-nine years later began life anew as a gay man. As he transforms from female to male and from teaching scientist to theatre performer, Link documents the extraordinary medical, social, legal, and personal processes involved in a complete identity change. Hilda Raz, a well-known feminist writer and teacher, observes this process both as an “astonished” parent and as a professor who has studied gender issues. All these perspectives come into play in this collaborative memoir, which travels between womens experiences and mens lives, explores the art and science of changing sex, maps uncharted family values, and journeys through a world transformed by surgery, hormones, love, and . . . clown school. Combining personal experience and critical analysis, the book is an unusualand unusually fascinatingreflection on gender, sex, and the art of living. This Bison Books edition features a set of discussion questions. Review:"The deepest pleasure of memoir is that it can teach us to see truths through eyes other than our own, and What Becomes You accomplishes exactly that."-Gayle Salamon, Great Plains Quarterly Review:"This deeply personal collaborative memoir details the multiple layers of the journey Child and Mom take on the road to Sarah becoming Aaron. This book can't help but challenge the readers to rethink what they know about gender, sex, family relationships, and themselves. A compelling narrative, this is the best book I've read this year."-OutSmart (OutSmart)Review:"A blend of essay, memoir and intergenerational dialogue, this title is stranger-and smarter-than the average transsexual memoir. . . . [An] oddly moving, more illuminating and memorable than a straightforward memoir could have been."-Publishers Weekly Web-Exclusive (Publishers Weekly Web Exclusive)Review:"Scientist Link begins his fascinating account of gender reassignment by explaining scientific classification. . . . Raz writes of her child with rare and moving candor. . . . Mother and son's poignant account becomes one of steadfast maternal love in the midst of changes only partly physical. Both knowingly return, always, to the terrain of the heart."-Booklist (Booklist)Review:"Raz manages to explore the multiplicity of truths and fictions that make up Link's personal embodiment. . . . What Becomes You illuminates the strained relationship between a mother and her son."-Jacob Anderson-Minshall, Women's Review of Books
Review:"What Becomes You is a tranny memoir/rant/documentary that reads like a whirlwind of James Joyce, William S. Burroughs, and Sarah Schulman, delivering a dizzying tour of gender worlds and netherworlds from a multiplicity of viewpoints."-Kate Bornstein, author of Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws (Kate Bornstein, Jul 25 2006 )Review:WHAT BECOMES YOUAaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz. Univ. of Nebraska, $24.95 (304p) ISBN 9780803210813 A blend of essay, memoir and intergenerational dialogue, this title is stranger-and smarter-than the average transsexual memoir. Link narrates his transition from female to male over the first 200 pages, interspersed with his views on everything from taxonomy to the difference between L.A. and Nebraska. His writing is hilarious, thoughtful and often poetic, but also frequently challenging. Discussing the general-knowledge concept that transsexuals feel "trapped" in their bodies, he points out that "If Id dealt with my discomfort by getting rid of my body, I would now be dead." He deftly avoids gender stereotypes at the same time he demonstrates the new chance at life his transformation has given him. Links mom, Raz, takes over for the next 100 pages, reflecting on her part in her daughters transformati(Publishers Weekly, Apr 26 2007 ) Review:"What Becomes You is a radically strange, deeply moving, unique book, a mother and child story like none you've ever read. There is nothing in our literature remotely like this story of personal transformation, a non-traditional story of coming of age and letting go told in a non-traditional way that challenges all of your assumptions about gender, family, stability, and social harmony. You will love this book, these people, and their candid, tough-minded bond."-Floyd Skloot, author of In the Shadow of Memory and A World of Light (Floyd Skloot, Jun 9 2006 )Review:Gay Trans Man Collaborates With Feminist Mom "Perception," trans man Aaron Raz Link remarks, "is in the eye of the beholder. It legitimately belongs to them," he says of his new book What Becomes You, an unusual trans memoir, which offers both Link's perspective and the perspective of his mother, renown feminist scholar and poet Hilda Raz. "We're all unreliable narrators," Link argues. "Which is, ultimately, what the book is about. Both art and family teach a larger vision, a shared vision, of identity." A Nebraska native currently directing Portland's Museum of Nature, Link has been a lot of things in his life: a professional clown, museum preparator, writer, HIV tester, theatre teacher, butterfly wrangler, social service worker, jeweler, mask maker, teacher, for(Jacob Anderson-Minshall, San Francisco Bay Times, Apr 9 2007 ) Review:"What Becomes You is the best memoir I've read in a decade. It is close to the bone, poetic without an ounce of sentimentality, full of humor and humanity, and excruciating in its self-examination. . . . This book is what happens when two extraordinary writers share intimate tales of self-discovery in prose that's both exquisite and accessible."-Glenn Scofield Williams, JustOut (JustOut)Review:"The deepest pleasure of memoir is that it can teach us to see truths through eyes other than our own, and What Becomes You accomplishes exactly that."-Gayle Salamon, Great Plains Quarterly (Gayle Salamon, Great Plains Quarterly)About the AuthorAaron Raz Link, a writer, performing artist, curator, and historian of science, is the director of the Museum of Nature in Portland, Oregon. Hilda Raz, a professor of English and womens and gender studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, is the Glenna Luschei Endowed Editor of Prairie Schooner and author of the poetry collections What Is Good, The Bone Dish, Divine Honors, Trans, and All Odd and Splendid. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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