Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters

Publisher: Serpent’s Tail

340 pages

Blurb

A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.

 

Review

This isn’t the first time I state that I have no idea how to review a book, but Detransition, Baby takes that statement to a whole new level. Not only am I not sure what to say, I don’t know how to say it either. Trans men and women, transition, as well as detransition is such a loaded subject (these days) I imagine I’m not the only person afraid to open her mouth in case I get it wrong and, without meaning to do so, upset an already vulnerable section of people.

I guess I’ll start with more general statements about this book. Detransition, Baby is a captivating story featuring three fascinating main characters. Any story about people attempting to break the mould and construct a new way of living—a new form of family—is bound to intrigue the reader, make them think and maybe reconsider what they’ve always accepted as ‘the norm’. A triangle constructed of three people who barely know each other and/or barely know each other in their current incarnation is bound to deliver a thrilling journey filled with ups and downs, accidental faux pas, and a steep learning curve.

Of course, Detransition, Baby takes those issues and levels them up to well beyond 11 since it throws together Reese, a trans woman, Amy/Ames a detransitioned trans woman, and Katrina, a cis woman who knows very little about trans issues and queer culture in general.

In this scenario, it would be easy to assume that I’d identify most with Katrina. And, up to a point I did but I also discovered that the Reese and Amy’s thoughts and feelings were far less alien to me than I’d assumed the might be.

In fairness, the scenario as presented in this book should be a recipe for disaster. Katrina finds herself pregnant by her lover, Ames. She doesn’t find out that Ames was Amy for several years until after she tells him she’s expecting. Katrina doesn’t want to raise a child on her own. Ames wants to raise a child but can’t commit to a future as a dad. Ames’s ‘solution’ to their dilemma is to bring in Reese, the trans woman he had a relationship of several years with when he was Amy. Reese desperately wants to be a mother but transition, of course, doesn’t come with the sudden ability to fall pregnant.

Over the course of the book, we shift from now—4 to 12 weeks after conception—to Reese and Amy’s pasts. We get to know Reese best, Amy/Amis almost as well but we learn less about Katrina. Probably because her life as a cis, mixed-race, and divorced woman is recognisable for most readers.

Initially, I read Reese’s story as something of a car crash, but it didn’t take me long to reconsider. If I look at transition as a sort of rebirth and take into account the boost of hormones required to transition her (or any other trans person) displaying what to me might look like teenage tendencies, is hardly surprising…to be expected even.

And that paragraph is a good description of my reading experience as a whole. Many thoughts, feelings, and actions I encountered were at first alien to me only to become at least somewhat recognisable or understandable after closer inspection. Without wanting to diminish what is, of course, a unique experience, I can’t help thinking that we are not as far removed from each other as we might believe at first. Or rather (and I’m having a hard time putting these feelings into words), I recognised certain aspects, be it that they are larger and harsher for trans people and nowhere near as easy to ignore or push under the carpet as they are for cis people. And regardless of the (un)truth in that statement, the fact remains that society at large is so busy establishing a barrier—an ‘us vs. them scenario— between trans people and everybody else, that everything that does or might connect us gets lost in the process. As the following quote shows, the book touches on this idea too when Reese and Katrina discuss divorce:

“The only people who have anything worthwhile to say about gender are divorced cis women who have given up on heterosexuality but are attracted to men. [..] They go through everything I go through as a trans woman. Divorce is a transition story. Of course, not all divorced women go through it. I’m talking about the ones who felt their divorce as a fall, or as a total reframing of their lives. The ones who have seen how the narratives given to them since girlhood have failed them, and who know there is nothing to replace it all. But who still have to move forward without investing in new illusions or turning bitter – all with no plan to guide them.”

Of course, I’m not a divorced woman. But I do believe there are other reasons for women (people in general?) to reinvent themselves, with all the confusion and conflicting emotions that creates. Then again, I can’t rule out that I’m (over)simplifying the issue; restructuring what I read so that it fits within my own experiences.

I could go on, but I’ll refrain. This book provoked a ton of thoughts and I know I’ll be pondering them for some time to come. This is one book I will re-read and re-read again. I took my time with this story because I knew there was a lot in it for me to process. Despite reading slowly and consciously I know without a shadow of a doubt that I’ve missed a lot. In my quest to learn and understand I will revisit this story.

As for the (very) ambiguous ending… I think it was a good fit. This isn’t an easy tale and shouldn’t come with perfect solutions and a fairy-tale ending; it’s too real and raw for that. Having said that, now that I know there will be a television series and that the producer has asked for a second season, I can’t wait to find out how Torrey Peters will continue Reese, Amy/Amis, and Katrina’s story.