Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Blurb from Goodreads

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.

Why I Want To Read It

Greeting everyone a happy first day of the week! The weekend has been an eventful one as I celebrated my sixth year of blogging. It was a brief respite after a tedious week that ensued before it. It still feels surreal though. I can’t believe that I have been sharing my experiences and thoughts on a variety of subjects for that long. I still have a lot to share and I hope you all stay with me as well. On another note, I hope that you are all doing well and that you had a great start to the week. I also hope everyone is doing well despite this uncertain time. I am fervently praying and hoping that the pandemic will end soon. Here in the Philippines, the rainy season is slowly taking over from the stifling summer heat; it is still hot but it is not as insufferable as the previous weeks.

With the new month comes the promise of a new reading journey. In the past three months (and including June as well), I have been traveling all over the world to dip in diverse works of literature. This week’s Goodreads Monday will be a deviation from the usual as I am featuring Torrey Peter’s Detransition, Baby. I first encountered the book, if my memory serves me right, when I was searching for books to include in my 2021 Top Books I Look Forward To List. As there were many books to choose one, I unfortunately, dropped Detransition, Baby even though the book’s premise piqued my interest.

A couple of months later, I again encountered the novel when I heard the news that the novel was longlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The announcement was rather a controversial one as transphobic sentiments were soon hurled towards Peters, who, I have just learned then, was a transwoman. Peters earned the distinction as the first transwoman to be nominated for the literary award. I guess the pressure from the public made the award-winning body to rethink the choice; unfortunately, the book was not part of the six shortlisted novels. It is an unfortunate event, really.

I recently purchased a copy of the novel and, thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long for my copy to arrive. Admittedly, it was this scandal that made me decide to read the novel. However, upon checking the novel’s premise a second time around, my interest was further piqued. Whilst I have read score of novels exploring identity, sexuality, and homosexuality, I don’t think I have read that many novels about transgenders. The term “detransition” is making me wonder what it really means and I am hoping the novel will give me a better understanding of it.

How about you fellow reader? What work by a Latin American or a Caribbean writer do you have in your reading list? What made you add it to your list? I hope you could share your answers in the comment box. For now, have a happy Monday!

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