Something That May Shock and Discredit You
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times bestselling author's sparkling memoir of changing genders whilst remaining a feminist.
Reasons for Transitioning: Want to impress good-looking ex; Want to upset good-looking ex; Bored of existing wardrobe, looking for excuse to buy all-new clothes that don’t fit in a new way; Younger siblings getting too much attention; Neoliberalism??; Want to sing both parts of a duet at karaoke; Something about upper-body strength; Excited to reinforce a different set of sexist stereotypes; Cheaper haircuts; Just love layering shirts ...
From the beloved writer behind The Toast and Slate’s ‘Dear Prudence’ column comes a personal essay collection exploring popular culture, literature, religion, and sexuality. With wit and compassion, Daniel Mallory Ortberg revisits beloved cultural and literary figures in the light of his transition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Slate advice columnist Ortberg (Texts from Jane Eyre) brings the full force of his wit and literary depth to this genre-bending essay collection. Describing it as "memoir-adjacent," Ortberg intersperses searingly honest passages about his journey as a transgender man with laugh-out-loud funny literary pastiche. In "Lord Byron Has a Birthday and Takes His Leave," the poet histrionically threatens to die gloriously in Greece to avoid reaching the mortifying age of 40. Sir Gawain tries to escape the sexual hijinks cooked up by Lady Bertilak and the Green Knight in "Sir Gawain Just Wants to Leave Castle Make-Out." Amid the literary fun, Ortberg reflects upon gender identity. Finding the national conversation about transgender people too child-centric he only realized he was one at age 30 Ortberg instead returned to the scriptures of his youth to find himself in "stories of transformation... already familiar" to him. In the most moving chapter, he drops the artifice of humor and lays bare his anguish at severing his relationship with his mother as her daughter, with the two finding solace in the story of Jacob and Esau two brothers who make peace but not before Jacob changes his name, and thus identity, to Israel. Ortberg provides an often hilarious, sometimes discomfiting, but invariably honest account of one man's becoming.
