A Book Review Starring "Some Assembly Required" by Arin Andrews

The short version:
Oklahoma teen Arin Andrews recounts his childhood and adolescence, struggling to identify and articulate his gender dysphoria, coming out to his mother and family and falling in love as he realizes his true self.

The long version:
It's both really special and a little unfortunate that this book is so intertwined with Katie Rain Hill's "Rethinking Normal," her memoir recounting her own childhood and adolescence overcoming gender dysphoria. Great in the sense that we have two people who discover their transgender selves separately and together, and also together as a couple (which adds a little bit of special novelty). But also maybe a little unfortunate in that, given they follow the same general format (perhaps because they were both published by Simon & Schuster at the same time) in terms of both narrative and physical structure (with the same style of inserted picture at the beginning of each chapter) you can't help as a result to compare the two in terms of narrative. It's inevitable, but somewhere along the way I put that aside and was happy that I did so.

This book is wonderful on multiple counts. Aside from its being the first of its kind to confide in readers the journey of a transgender teen, it manages to be graceful and well written. Andrews recounts his tale with such great detail for recall of past events and ability to describe his feelings as he felt them at the time. What a great feat he's accomplished. He takes you on his journey and manages to never lose you as a reader (with the able assistance of his co-writer).

And being that I'm a sucker for a good cover, I really loved this one.

A Book Review Starring "Rethinking Normal" by Katie Rain Hill

The short version:
Oklahoman Hill recounts her childhood and struggle to articulate who she was from an early age, through her adolescence when she discovered transgenderism through online searching and was finally able to articulate what wasn't right, her subsequent bullying as a trans teen and into her early adulthood living as a transgender young adult while attending college at the University of Tulsa and embracing her role as a public advocate within the LGBT community.

The long version:
I always feel the need to preface a review of a work of memoir with my definition of what memoir is. Which is to say that I see memoir as a highly subjective version of historical events, not exactly fiction but certainly with made up, recollected aspects, particularly when it comes to using dialogue within quotation marks and recall of specific events.

That being said, I found this memoir to be pretty fabulous. An engrossing, easy page-turner of a read from a voice that sounded very much like a very recent teenager (which she was with affections for the Jonas Brothers, video games and Bruno Mars, among other things) which served to make her highly relatable to young adults regardless of their gender identity. But it was also written in a mature, thoughtful voice that articulated experiences well (perhaps with the help of her ghostwriter Ariel Schrag. We could all do tons worse than to have accomplished writer Schrag as our ghostwriter or writing partner).

True, the story seemed to end awkwardly and abruptly, as if they didn't know how to draw a conclusion so tried to invent one that seemed forced. And the last fifty pages are spent recollecting Hill's first romantic relationships, which are illustrative of so many teen relationships which makes it universal in way and yet is still shown through the prism of a transgender girl with her own baggage, but it's definitely not the strongest part of the book.

The book is at its best throughout the first two hundred pages as Katie starts her freshman year of college and then returns to her childhood and takes the reader deliberately through her history with a fabulous attention to detail and place and people. So much so that you're smiling and your heart breaks at points throughout, a testament to the writers' abilities to develop Hill's story and the people who populate it.

On a side note, the book paints a vivid picture of Oklahoma which I really appreciated, having never spent time in the real south. Not only in terms of growing up as a misfit teenager in suburban Tulsa, but she also paints a portrait of Oklahoma teens, suburbia in the Bible Belt, and the great LGBT community there that supported her and her family.

She also provides a "how to talk to transgender people" addendum which was really great and felt new and fresh and of course pertinent today, compared to all those books that just provide 'additional resources" (which she does that too.