Fairest
A Memoir
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction
"Talusan sails past the conventions of trans and immigrant memoirs." --The New York Times Book Review
"A ball of light hurled into the dark undertow of migration and survival." --Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
A love story with the heart of Austen classics and a reflective journey of becoming that shift our own perceptions of romance, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.
Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a "sun child" from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America. Coping with the strain of parental neglect and the elusive promise of U.S. citizenship, Talusan found comfort from her devoted grandmother, a grounding force as she was treated by others with special preference or public curiosity. As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white, and further access to elite circles of privilege required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality, and queerness. Questioning the boundaries of gender, Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved. Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni's Room.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Talusan, a founding executive editor of Them, Cond Nast's LGBTQ online magazine, who was born as an albino boy in the Philippines, relays her "journey across gender" in an assured debut memoir with a cinematic flair. Talusan discusses growing up as a blond-haired oddity with "weak eyes" in the Philippines in the 1970s and '80s, and of feeling shame for liking boys. She writes with distance about her "derelict" parents father was absent, mother was a gambler who in 1990 brought her to the U.S., where "white people thought I was white" and where it was "to my benefit to seem white too." Talusan attended Harvard, where she came out as gay and began exploring drag and her desire to transition. She addresses her sex life, including going to a bathhouse and hooking up with men through personal ads, and talks heartbreakingly of being in a relationship with someone who loved her as a man but not as a woman. Talusan had gender reassignment surgery in Thailand in 2002, but the narrative jumps over the procedure itself; rather, it's about the process of coming into one's own and of gaining "freedom of expression" through gender transition. This elegant memoir examining whiteness, womanhood, and the shaping of identity will resonate with readers of any community, LGBTQ or not.
