Joy Reads Books

Tag: inclusivity

  • A Call to Honesty and Love: Review of Trans Memoir “Calling My Deadname Home”

    A Call to Honesty and Love: Review of Trans Memoir “Calling My Deadname Home”

    Literary review of a memoir of a transgender man’s journey to find love and acceptance.

    Cover of the memori, "A Call to Honesty and Love: Calling My DeadnameHome" by Avi Ben-Zeev

    Dr. Avi Ben-Zeev’s memoir, “Calling My Deadname Home”, is an extraordinary and heart wrenching journey through time to reconnect and let go of his former, female self, Talia. Growing up in a working-class family in Israel, Dr. Ben-Zeev only just finished high school, yet now holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology, an expert in stereotype threat and implicit bias, he is a writer and professor.

    This is a beautiful, heart wrenching gift of a book. There are books that enter our life and lodge themselves directly into our heart with their brevity, love, and honesty. This was one of them. 

    “Calling My Deadname Home” is told in three parts – early transition, later transition, and Talia’s story. There is a sense that Talia was in constant flight from the imprisonment of her self and her past and only when Avi reconciles this sense of imprisonment and the sacrifice that Talia is safely freed. 

    At no point will Avi or Talia sacrifice their authenticity, the driving force within themselves to act in what seems to be a just way. We see this in Talia’s determination to avoid her mandatory service in the IDF. 

    Their journey is one that shows us we are not just one aspect of our personality, one traumatic event, or one action we regret. We are all of these things and none of them at the same time as there’s always an opportunity for forgiveness and love. “Calling My Deadname Home” is as unflinchingly honest as its writer as he moves in the world. There are themes of self-loathing, particularly in regard to the sexual assaults of young Talia and the lasting traumas. 

    A beautiful, heart wrenching gift of a book.

    Avi writes with such honesty that Talia’s loss of self and pain is palpable on the page. 

    There is sex, some of it kinky, and I feel like straight vanilla folks will view the sex as “graphic” simply because the bodies doing it are not cisgender. There’s no need to clutch any pearls and they’re in fact written a lot better than most sex you encounter in current books and most importantly, it’s between consenting adults. 

    Definitely recommend to readers interested in gender studies, trans experience, and the non-Western experience. There are a lot of books in the world about cis white dude’s experience, “Calling My Deadname Home” is the brutally honest opposite of that and I’m better for having read it. We should all listen to more voice’s like Avi’s.

    “Calling My Deadname Home” will be published 14 November 2024 by Muswell Press. Thanks to the publisher for providing early review copies to NetGalley.

    View of British Columbia's Sunshine Coast. Long grasses line a pebble beach covered in driftwood. Tall evergreens and a mountain are in the background, the sky is an incredible cerulean blue with white wispy clouds.

    A view of the Sunshine Coast, where I was visiting when I read this spectacular memoir.

  • Characters Take Flight in MONARCH: Literary Review of New Short Story Collection

    Dusty road background and book cover of Emily Jon Tobias' short story collection, Monarch.

    In Emily Jon Tobias’ new collection of short stories, “MONARCH”, we are confronted by realistically flawed characters who are given the space to form, make mistakes, and heal. An award-winning writer and  Pushcart Prize nominee, Tobias was raised in the American midwest and now lives in Southern California.  The way she captures and releases hard fought words has a feel of that hardscrabble grit you used to associate with an essential Americanism. It’s all the more poignant that the characters in MONARCH are imperfectly real – addicts and sad girls, overwhelmed mothers and people whose tether to sanity has loosened. 

    Tobias plays with language and voice to raise her characters into existence.The title story stopped my breath and as I read, I had the distinct sense that Tobias was gleefully playing with her words, stretching out each sentence to its limit, a fullness like the protagonist’s intentional weight gain. My first inclination – trim these sentences, they seem too full created the sense I was as quick to jump to conclusions as the people who brazenly stare at Georgia and judge her size. Such is the subtle brilliance of Tobias’ writing – the excess was an intentional weight and slowing down that ties us to Georgia.

    We see this again in “Vida”, the sentences short and choppy with Wiley’s anger. Tobias’ characters are confused and confusing – which is what I feel most days. Which is to say, each is fully formed in their humanity as its splayed on the page for the brief glimpse we have as a reader. We are like passersby, sometimes witnessing these characters’ worst moments and the way Tobias intends to pull them through and heal some of the cracks. 

    The book includes a reading guide that is straightforward to use, and I think this book works well for readers looking to include more diverse character sets in their reading. It depicts largely heteronormative experience, while also giving space and life to queer characters. Upper level English class settings, as well as guided reading groups – there is intention in the way Tobias has cultivated this collection and guided readers to know the characters in their complete selves, regardless of identity or partner. The writing is accessible with beautiful prose, worth a read because of that alone. 

    Find MONARCH via Emily Jon Tobias’ website or visit your local bookseller.