Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story by Sarah Myer

9 reviews

apogee_11's review against another edition

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4.0


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indeedithappens's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0


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bexrecca's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

A deeply honest memoir. This one was hard to read at times and really sad, while providing some hope at the end. I am glad their family was so supportive and it seems like a lot of hard conversations happened both inside and outside of the text. Well worth the read. 

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lilybear3's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

To preface this review, I myself am a transracial adoptee.  I was adopted by white parents from China as a baby.  I'm immediately adding this to my "Essential Reading List If You Want to Get to Know Me" (title in progress).  This might be less of a review and more of I related to this so hard and I'm glad it exists and everyone should read it so they can have an idea of what it's like to be a transracial adoptee.

It's important to note that every adoptee experience is unique and each person has a different perspective.  Some are good, some are bad, some are neutral.  All adoptees' stories are valid and hold significance.  At the root of it, adoption is trauma.  Period.  This is something that was hard for me to learn and that my experience doesn't invalidate others' and vice versa.

Sarah's story is impactful and does not shy away from documenting the racism they experienced in their childhood nor the ableism of the 2000s (both of these are still prevalent, may look different today).  I related a lot; growing up in a small white town, not being exposed to other cultures, not knowing when I was micro-aggressed or what those were (lack of exposure to stereotypes), etc.  When I didn't see myself in Sarah, I saw myself in Liz, Sarah's sister.  Growing up, I was a lot like Liz in that adoption was a part of my identity, but I didn't think about it as much.  I'm fortunate to have no major racist incidents and I got along with many of my peers.  It wasn't until my early-ish mid-twenties I started coming out of the adoptee fog.  I'm also grateful to relate to having extremely supportive and loving parents.

I mean this is in the best way possible; I can't wait to talk about it in therapy.  I learned some stuff about myself with the help of Sarah's story.  This book was healing for me and I hope it is for others. 

The art is incredible.  Simply amazing at illustrating these emotions they just hit the reader hard.  Sarah is truly talented.

Backmatter included a note from the author, a list of adoptee and mental health resources, and family photos.

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devynreadsnovels's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

5.0


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toonyballoony's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.5


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livlamentloathe's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Nonfiction books, even graphic novels, don’t always catch me fully but I sat and read this beginning to end with very few breaks of distraction. I identified with Sarah’s feelings of being left out and feeling crazy and inhuman compared with your peers. I cannot fully comprehend the struggle of being non-white with white parents in a racist small town, but I felt for them as they grew into a teenage. I envy the way they let their interests be big and obvious!

Ironically, I was mocked for liking anime in middle school too. I hid this interest so deeply that I didn’t talk about it publicly again until I graduated college and the world (including my own private world) became more accepting. I’m even jealous of today’s teens growing up in an age where anime and manga are massively popular. When I was bullied for my interests, I shut them down and hid them away. Sarah’s ability to cosplay boldly was brave as heck.

This was a great read from a perspective I’m not familiar with. I encourage anyone who’s ever felt different or “Othered” by society to read this!

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lettuce_read's review

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4.5


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chronicallybookish's review

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emotional fast-paced
<i>Special thanks to FierceReads and NetGalley for an eARC of this book! All thoughts and opinions reflected in this review are my own.</i>

I don’t rate memoirs. To me, there is something deeply uncomfortable about assigning a numerical value to a book that someone wrote about themself, their life, their experiences. Who am I to judge what they went through or how they chose to portray it? Sure I could get nitpicky on sentence structure and writing craft or in this case illustration, but a book is more than that, so I simply give memoirs no rating at all.
I think this was an impactful, important book. I think it’s going to mean so much to so many people, and I am so glad that it exists. I’m glad I read it, though it made me feel ill to read about some of the things that the author experienced.
I was a little uncomfortable with how many slurs were used, repeatedly. I understand that this is a memoir, set in the 90s, and these things were really said to the author, but I’m not sure how I feel about them repeating them directly, even if it was condemned in text. Many of these slurs were not this author’s to reclaim. The use of slurs is complicated, and I understand the point that they were trying to make, and I’m not even sure it was wrong of them to use these slurs in their memoir. I’m kind of confused on what the “right thing” is when it comes to that sort of thing, if there is one at all, but I did think it important to just, point out, especially since slurs can be very triggering to read, and basically every slur you can think of (except the N word) is used in this book, including ones I’ve never even heard of before.
That said, I do recommend this book. I think everyone should read it, if they are in a place to do so.

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