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Stuck In The Middle With You: A Memoir Of Parenting In Three Genders (2013)

by Jennifer Finney Boylan(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0767921763 (ISBN13: 9780767921763)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Crown

review 1: It took me reading two or three really good essays by Jennifer Finney Boylan in the New York Times several months apart before I remembered, "oh, right, she's the transgender woman, who teaches in Maine," and to decide that it was time to read one of her books. To get a truly in-depth understanding of how James decided to become Jenny, I think I'll need to read her previous memoir, She's Not There, but Stuck in the Middle With You is pretty fascinating. Boylan intersperses her reflections on parenting as a man, transgender woman-in-transition, and, finally, woman, with interviews that shed light on the experiences of marriage and being family, and on how complex those experiences are, even for people with less complicated stories than hers. The structure works, and so many... more interesting writers show up in the interviews (Augusten Burroughs, Richard Russo, Anna Quindlen, Ann Beattie, Susan Minot, Timothy Kreider, Edward Albee) that it would be a shame for anyone to miss them. There are definitely things glossed-over and/or missing here about the ways Boylan's transition has affected her marriage that make the account feel slightly less than honest, but I suppose that deciding what to include and what not to is the memoirist's prerogative!
review 2: I really enjoyed this book. It was thoughtful and witty, and I found myself underlining and/or reading a lot of passages out loud. It was also cool (although somewhat random) how she interviewed her author friends about related topics and interspersed the interviews throughout. This book satisfied my enjoyment of looking into other people's real lives and seeing how their experiences have differed from mine. less

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