What Becomes You

Written with brutal honesty, these authors have opened a door on sexuality and gender issues that will not be closed easily.

Hilda Raz and Aaron Raz Link write the story of Aaron's young life. He starts off as a young woman, Sarah, and becomes a transgendered gay man in his early thirties. That's the short version. The book is honest, but the words that I kept thinking were "tenderness" and "compassion." Both mother and son handle each other so carefully as they negotiate the difficult passage of losing one person and gaining another. Sarah is gone, Aaron has emerged. As a mother, I feel Hilda's boat rocking on and on and how compassionately she negotiates the waters, compassionate with her son, compassionate with herself for being confused. I love this book and would recommend it to anyone who wonders how much gender determines personhood, to anyone who has thought about family and the delicate threads that bind family.

"What Becomes You" is fascinating, moving, educational and revealing. In this book Aaron and his mother examine their lives within the context of their experiences and expectations of gender, what it is and what it isn't, what it means and what it doesn't mean. This book avoids sentimentality and sensationalism---instead it is gentle, intelligent and intimate. Reading Aaron's section, I felt as if I were sitting beside him as he told me the story of his life, his emotions as a child growing up feeling always out of place in a female role, and his struggles as an adult who chose to change not simply his body but his relationship to the world. Reading his mother's section I experienced the roller-coaster of emotions that she felt during the years of Aaron's self-discovery and gender change and, along the way, undergoing her own trials with breast cancer. Throughout the book the authors' love and respect for one another's lives is palpable. This book is not just a "trans" story. It is the story of family, longing, love, loss, society, work, literature, healing and much more.

I remember meeting Sarah many years ago. Aaron has given me insights that will hopefully allow me to be a better friend to several folks who share her experiences, I plan to recommend the book, not just to these friends, but to their friends and famlies. As a grandmother and great-grandmother, I share with Aaron the love of a wonderful person, his friend - my son. I thank him for the introduction, not only to Sarah, but now Aaron and the world he lives within. His book has furthered the limited education of this rural midwesterner, and I thank him so much for that. And remember, Aaron, when you dig in the sand, fingers and flippers often bear a striking resemblance! But that doesn't mean a crime has been committed. Keep exploring, and keep writing.

At first I was little reticent, fearing a lot of gay/anguished person trapped in the wrong body kind of stuff. Instead, I found the author's viewpoint startlingly original, and very much angst and dogma free. Aaron writes with a clear voice, and the little asides, and various characters he meets, and situations he ends up in...are seen from a wry and humorous point of view. Which is not to say there are not depths. Indeed, this book will definetly set you mind spinning as to just how we perceive ourselves, and how we let the world shape us. While the book is very good, I would love to see the author use this writing style to take on other projects. I think he has great potential. If you have any friends who are going thru big changes, this is a book I think they will like. I will definetly be buying it for some friends of mine. I rarely write reviews, but I think this is a very worthy book, and applaud the author's, honesty, and style.