We hope you enjoy this recent book review from our Goodreads page. S[R]’s own Julie Matsen read My Life as a Boy: A Woman’s Story by Kim Chernin, and had this to say:
Boys, in a patriarchal society like the Western world, are conditioned to act a certain way in certain situations. As are girls, as are men, as are women. What happens when a person molts their gender to become something new?
With this concept in mind, we are introduced to Kim Chernin, a born woman who is becoming a born-again boy. To the chagrin of her longtime husband Max, Kim uses her budding relationship with Hadamar, a stunning woman, to facilitate her metamorphosis.
Women here seem to be damsels who go from distress to distress, from rescuer to rescuer. Boys, on the other hand, are impetuous rogues who can pursue whom they please without too much reprisal or reprimand. (Oddly, girls and men are almost never mentioned as personality types.) Boys and women are not simply genders to Chernin, but archetypes, colored bits of glass that shift in the kaleidoscope of what it means to be in love.
Eloquent and open, Chernin gives us a modern reversal on Orlando for American readers.
You can read Chernin’s My First Year in the Country in s[r]’s Issue 6.
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