Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

GIRLHOOD

Carolyn Hays

Letter To My Transgender Daughter

A mother writes about what it means to raise a trans child in a Southern city of the USA. For the first time she speaks about the pivotal event that led her and her husband to uproot their family and move to a liberal city in the North. This memoir is dedicated to her daughter who is now thirteen and who - as she writes - deserves to know her full story, because this story belongs to her:

"In GIRLHOOD, I tell my daughter the brutal truths of being trans, as I see them, but I also insist on the beautiful truths, which are abundant. Ten years ago, there were almost no resources for parents. Now, we're inundated - but only with a profusion of primers. I wanted to go deep and connect my daughter's story to the larger issues that affect all of us, the richness of gender, motherhood, girlhood, the intricate and stunning architecture of the brain; the existence of transgender people throughout history from Ancient China to Joan of Arc to the long history of drag balls; botany and migration; the science of seeing and being seen; God, feminism, and phantom limbs; the schizophrenic world that is taking shape around her. In the beginning of GIRLHOOD, I suggest that my daughter make her own mythology and make it grand. She is. And we all should.

Available products
Book Published 2022-09-01 by Blair Books

Comments

It's impossible to read this book and not root for the fierce, human, beautiful family at its center and the daughter that they - 'like tanks' - protect against those who try to steal her joy. A Girlhood is, at its heart, a love story, a grand American love story. It educates without scolding, inspires without sentimentalizing. Who should read this gorgeously written book? Not merely anyone parenting a transgender child, or anyone parenting any child, but anyone who's ever been a child. This"this" is the book we need now. -- Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother, W. W. Norton

Carolyn Hays's memoir is searing, haunting, and inspiring. It's a story that asks us to consider what we would do if the simple act of loving our own child threatened to cost us everything. In prose memorable for its gentleness and wisdom, Ms. Hays's story is about more than the transgender question: it's about ignorance and wisdom; hatred and love; men, women, and children. In the end, A Girlhood is about all of us. -- Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There and Good Boy

UK Picador; Spain: Peninsula; Catalan: Ara Llibres; France: Flammarion; Italy: ADD Edizioni; USA: Blair Books;