Torrey PetersDETRANSITION, BABY

Read to have your self and your soul bettered. Read to laugh and cry. Read to smile. Read to hug it in the end.

The first-ever trans nominee for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Torrey Peters explores the ideas of parenthood, grief, and family through conflict of an unwanted pregnancy. Detransition, Baby is a rare book for many reasons.Peters’s narrator is unreliable. This, perhaps was a purposeful choice, to demonstrate the inevitable unpredictability that defines trans lives and to break away from the fixated storytelling that mirrors cisgender existence. Thus, the everyday hazards of being fiercely oneself in the structurally unviable, exclusionary space that we call society get verbalised in this book. Peters weaves the narrative in a way that moves trans politics to the forefront without being preachy.Revolving around the life of two transgender people – Reese, and Amy/Ames – and one cisgender woman, Katrina, the book opens with the narrator verbalising Reese’s self-doubt: “Were married men just desperately attractive to her? Or was the pool of men who were available to her as a transwoman only those who had already locked down a cis wife and could now ‘explore’ with her?”Reese seems to have never learnt from hooking up with cismen. Though she has acquired the comforts of a middle-class living by getting a job, having been left by Amy, whom she loved and with whom she came “as close to domesticity as she figured possible for a trans girl,” she craves to exercise her womanhood.Amy, who has now detransitioned to become Ames, works in a corporate setup; however, he hasn’t come out to anyone in the office about his transsexual past. Even though he carefully navigated his relationship with Katrina, his boss, who is an Asian, she shocks him one day by announcing that she is pregnant with his child.Ames tells her “that he was sterile – not that he’d been a transsexual woman with atrophied balls.” Unable to fathom the situation at hand, and thinking it of as a chance to bring Reese back into his life, Ames calls Reese to ask if she is willing to co-parent his and Katrina’s baby, without consulting Katrina, who after several miscarriages in the past is determined to have this child.Reese’s dilemma – whether to accept this offer from her ex, who cheated on her, or not – drives the plot. Later, her acceptance of Katrina and Ames’s situation makes her part of the process of conception, as she finds the trans way of getting pregnant. But, as a transwoman, she’s sure that even though she will have a child, womanhood will not come to her as it does to ciswomen.Katrina takes this as an opportunity to cis-plain to Reese her validity and authenticity as a woman, so what she is trans. To which Reese replies: “Sure, a lot of women I know wonder if they do want a child, but not why. It’s assumed why. The question ciswomen get asked is: Why don’t you want kids? And then they have to justify that. If I had been born cis, I would never even have had to answer these questions. I wouldn’t have had to prove that I deserve my models of womanhood. But I’m not cis. I’m trans.”The novel is as much a work of fiction as it is a fierce critique of armchair activism. Peters, through her story, takes a dig at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), too: “...like most of the big gay orgs, focused on messaging and lobbying; the money was not for trans people, it was to facilitate proper discussion about such topics as trans people.”She doesn’t spare the “loudest” mainstream voices either that try to ‘educate’ people about transness in a few simple steps and generalise it. Lambasting people who proffer guidebooks and cheat sheets to navigate a conversation with a trans person, “to avoid offending them,” she writes: “This is what happens when the only trans voices out there are the loudest, shrillest trans girls constantly publishing dogmatic Trans 101 hot takes to rebuke the larger cis public.”At this juncture, it’s useful to circle back to the recent feud between Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Akwaeke Emezi to understand and appreciate what Emezi meant by Ngozi Adichie’s comment “transwomen are transwomen” is an erasure of trans, that it invites violence on them.It’s worth noting how Peters’s nomination attracted an open letter, in which signatories called out the Women’s Prize for Fiction for including “male authors” and suggested that it makes them “unworthy of their own prize.” It’s not only ridiculous to misgender an author and deny her dignity, it clearly shows that the signatories, among whom were dead writers, are yet to embrace the growing definition of feminism, leave alone understand how trans people are disenfranchised from writing their own narratives directly or indirectly by the publishing world.Peters’s Detransition, Baby appears combatant against both heteronormative storytelling and choice feminists’ templatised writing. Her ideas and humorous critique of everyday living and diversity within queer contours make for a joyous read. In a way, her writing exhibits her own desire to not “put up with the bullshit of gender in order to satisfy my sense of myself. I am trans, but I don’t need to do trans.”

Detransition, Baby is an extraordinary book.I feel as if I’ve journeyed to someplace at once alien and familiar. The descriptions of gender politics careened unsparingly across the map of human emotion.In so many ways, this book maintained that arch, unsentimental impatience I associate with queer life of a certain vintage. Call it Oberlin College, c. 1990s. Now as then, I often felt completely out of my depth. At certain withering take-downs of women, men, or relationships, I’d swear I actually blushed to have been seen so truly. In those moments, I was grateful to be reading it alone; at least there was no witness to my humiliation.Then with a sudden force, a description would swerve to some place so aching, poetic, and universal it took my breath away.There was a poetry to the way the author insisted I respect our differences, while demanding I admit our sameness. I found it intoxicating.I was grateful to get such an intimate window into the minds of these two trans women - and the woman trying so hard to love them. They were flawed, and sincere, and above all, believable. By the end, I realized the book had made them so real that my initial curiosity had become, instead, genuine affection for each of these characters. I will genuinely miss them. Like all of the best books, I know I will turn this story over in my mind, over and over again.You should read this book. And if you come to a moment - as I did so often at first - where you believe you can’t possibly relate, do yourself a favor. Keep going. I promise, you’ll be so very glad you did.

Every chapter is trans catharsis. Loooved it. Cried in parts and read it as fast as I could. Want to write my own great trans novel, now.

What an exceptional piece of literature. I really enjoyed Detransition, baby, and I've learned a lot.

oh boy, what to say... i thought this was an excellent debut novel, and especially liked the attention to detail, concerning the lifes of transwomen in NYC in the teens and the early 2020s. i thought the 3 main characters had depth, their agencies were realistic, and the baggage they carry felt genuine.Torrey has admitted that the majority of the situations and scenarios in the novel have evolved from her own experiences with her girlfriends, or friends of friends, and you can see that nuance shine through.some scenes made me laugh out loud, especially the confusion over Ames' "transition" in the workplace, a wonderful example of oversteer by HR depts nationwide, trying to figure out how best to accomodate (i.e. not get sued) their transgender employees and failing miserably.terms like 'cis' are used, as well as reference to PrEP, but it never feels like the reader, or one of the characters are preaching or being preached at for not knowning the terminology, and the idea of a collective approach to raising a child is one i'm seeing more and more in cities such as NYC, which seem to be abandoning conservative ideals of motherhood, childcare and identity.i also liked how the title can be interpreted on multiple levels.the split narrative structure works, kinda. i feel like it ran out of steam a little on the last 3rd of the story.on the flipside; i didn't like the ending. it felt apparent that Torrey might not've figured out a satisfactory ending, so we ended up with the ending we got.the last cutaway to Reece's decision on the boardwalk makes zero sense.some of Ames' motivations weren't clear. i felt like there's half a chapter missing somewhere.the "violence against women" slogan being screeched, both here and on other platforms, is present, for about half a chapter, but is being weaponised as a stick to beat Torrey and other transwomen with, courtesy of the TERF brigade, and the other radicals feminazis.and i find it difficult to equate it to any semblence of reality, when novels like 'Fifty Shades of Grey' are nothing but wall-to-wall violence with similar men, only for these same SWERF & TERF commentators to then fall silent on the subject. so perplexing indeed...so, final score. 8.5 outta 10.good description, and a fantastic premise that gets very little love and tons of hate, here in 2021, but falls at the final hurdle. can't wait to read what Torrey writes next!!!

I found this book to be interesting, fascinating, easy to read, with very rounded characters. It was also enlightening and an all round great read.