Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters review â a comedy of manners
This irresistible novel about wanting a child makes a careful distinction between âbeing transâ and âdoing transâ
Torrey Peters . plays with the structural conventions of literary realism. Photograph: Natasha Gornik
Torrey Peters . plays with the structural conventions of literary realism. Photograph: Natasha Gornik
GraceLavery
Thu 7 Jan 2021 04.00 EST
Last modified on Mon 11 Jan 2021 15.43 EST
If the title of Torrey Petersâs irresistible debut novel
Detransition, Baby sounds to you like a seductive invitation to slip back into a previous gender identity, you will be ill prepared for an altogether more uncanny seduction: the calming whispers of bourgeois realism.
Torrey Peters
Torrey Peters is a writer who splits her time between Brooklyn, New York, and rural Vermont. Her first novel,
Detransition, Baby, was published by One World in January. Peters is also the author of the novellas
The Masker and
I DEDICATED MY FIRST NOVEL,
Detransition, Baby, to divorced cis women. While working on the book, I found a model for how to live as a trans woman in the writings of divorced cis women. Think about it: Divorced cis women must start over at a point in adulthood when they’re supposed to be established; they must give up on the illusions that led to failure; they must avoid bitterness and self-pity; and they frequently even change their names to match the new self they must narrativize into being. It’s easy to look at the current place of trans women in society and think that we’re witnessing a moment of something liberating. But for me that same liberation was daunting I wanted a map. In works by and about divorced cis women, I eventual