"Waiting On" Wednesday spotlights upcoming releases that everyone's excited about (created by Jill at Breaking The Spine).
Bestselling and acclaimed author Jennifer Finney Boylan returns with another remarkable memoir about gender and parenting. Jenny Finney Boylan told her wife that she was transgender when their two children were young, and as Jenny transitioned from a man to a woman and from a father to a mother, their family faced unique challenges and questions. In this thoughtful, tear-jerking, hilarious memoir, Jenny asks what it means to be a father, or a mother.
From the friends who support their new configuration to the woman who says she's "too close-minded" to let their sons continue to play together to Jenny's wife, their family grows and changes together in ways both utterly exceptional and entirely commonplace, as their sons turn into teenagers and a relationship of many years weathers illness, loss of parents, and a husband turning into a wife.
Through incredibly insightful interviews, Jenny examines relationships with fathers and mothers, people's memories of the children they were and the parents they had, and the many different ways a family can be. Jenny includes conversations with Richard Russo, Edward Albee, Ann Beattie, Augusten Burroughs, Susan Minot, Trey Ellis, Timothy Kreider, Anna Quindlen, and other parents and children discussing gender, how families are shaped, and the difficulties and wonders of being human.
Followed by an Afterword by Anna Quindlen that includes Jenny and her wife discussing the challenges they've faced and the love they share, Stuck in the Middle with You will be another classic. [Apr 23, 2013]
In what is sure to be a wildly successful follow up to her first two memoirs, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders and I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted, Jennifer Boylan turns the literary camera outward to focus not on personal journeys, but on journeying through parenting.
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I usually don't read memoirs, but this one sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing.
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