This blog post is the second in a series by Aster Luke, highlighting collections in the Koller-Collins and Robbins Library.
This book, Detransition, Baby By Torrey Peters, is perfect for trans women to relive their closeted youth and get a little light headed in the process. It is a rather small book, I read it in just a few sittings. I suppose I should say that it's a fast read, not that it's a small book. If anything its a very average sized book.
But what is it about! Thanks for asking. Detransition, Baby, is more or less about three different kinds of woman who are trying to decide if they could all raise a baby, together. In case the title wasn't clear, one of these woman has since detransitioned. Not that she isn't trans, just that she has redonned her shell of masculinity after an incident the book helpfully describes, and which I will not.
The book uses the conception of the baby as an anchor point while the perspective flips between Amy/Ames and Reece in the years before and weeks after. While well used and well paced, I don't find it particularly interesting to discuss here and so we can leave it at that.
What is interesting, however, is just how emotional this book is. Multiple times I would read a section and need to stop, do a few breathing exercises with the reassuring wall of Arthuriana, behind me, and then continue.
Hm, I don't think that quite gets my point across.
I do not often cry to any media. I've nearly cried once at a concert and once reading a different book. Detransition, Baby brought me as close to tears as I've ever been from any media in any medium (at work no less!). More than once I would finish a paragraph, pause to digest some garden variety transphobia, then continue to read with the specter of Torrey Peters standing over my shoulder to point out this and that other thing that happens to trans woman. Isn't it cool! I love shared experiences.
This book also deals with motherhood, and poor jobs raising kids, and fighting just to be able to raise a kid at all. During one discussion between Reece and Katrina, Reece, a trans woman who wants to be a mother more than anything is asked, "why". She responds that the reason is the same as any other woman. She goes on to expound on why only trans women are asked to justify their desire for motherhood and children. Katrina, a daughter of Chinese and Jewish immigrants, explains that Reece is really only thinking about cis white women. The conversation continues from there, about wanting children, being told you can't or you shouldn't. They talk about motherhood, and failing motherhood. This post is not an explicitly feminist one (or transfeminist one for that matter), so rather than tell you what to think about any of this, I would invite you to read this book about deeply imperfect people trying to navigate a situation no one has an answer for.
If there happen to be any trans woman or women who are thinking about transition or wherever you are in that journey, I doubly recommend this book. It teases open scabs and is something of a salve, all at once. You can find this book in the Robbins Koller-Collins collection—Hardcover, and estradiol blue.
