L I TE RATU RE I N RE V I E W
Oddly, both complication and resolution come when she
finds herself in two of the roles she always imagined:
“mom... and business woman in a suit.” After her first mar-
riage ends over cultural and career differences, she marries
a man much like her domineering father, starts her own
business, gives birth to a daughter and a son, and shares
the common belief that “The world is divided between
two genders. ... All men and all women are meant to oper-
ate in silos, drawing from strengths unique to their sex.”
Then a new family member enters: Penelope, her third
biological child, who, after two years of battling her as-
signed birth gender, has a brief but world-altering conver-
sation with his mother: “[Jodie] ‘Why are you so angry all
the time?’ [Penelope] ‘Because everyone thinks I’m a girl,
Mama—and I’m not... I don’t feel like a boy, Mama, I am a boy.’”
“Penelope himself
makes clear that
boyhood is not just
another box to be
placed in, ‘I’m not that
type of boy, Mama,
one who just likes to
crash cars...’”
The rest of the book describes Jodie’s quest to make the world not only safe, but also welcom-
ing and affirming, for Penelope. Of course, this is only one family’s story—that of a fairly large
affluent New York Black family, with living Africans of the previous generation, and on Jodie’s
side deep and meaningful southern roots.
It’s also, as Jodie sees it, a story with broader meaning: “The story of trans people... was shaping
up to be very similar to the story of Black people, of women, of people of color all over the world.”
Many of the book’s events are probably typical: puzzled relatives who continue to give Pe-
nelope girlish gifts, friends who see this as a “phase,” bathroom issues, and so forth. But some
of the book’s finest moments occur when others offer welcome, understanding, and insight, as
well as when the family itself grows in understanding.
When Penelope’s paternal grandfather, a highly traditional Ghanaian, is told that Penelope
wanted to be called he, he “slammed his hand down on the table, letting out a big, booming
laugh. ‘Ayyy! It’s no problem at all. In my language of Twi, Jodie, we don’t use gender pronouns,
I never remember them anyway. He, she... it’s all the same to me.’”
Penelope himself makes clear that boyhood is not just another box to be placed in, “I’m not that
type of boy, Mama, one who just likes to crash cars. I want to draw.” Later, at a New Hampshire
camp for transgender and non-conforming kids and their families, a 19-year-old speaker is
asked if he has considered gender reassignment surgery. He replies, “No, I’m not changing my
body. I’m a boy. This is my body. So this is a boy’s body.”
Continues on page 26
CSEE Connections
Summer 2019
Page 25