A review by jocelynw
The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making by Jared Yates Sexton

5.0

This is a vital, important, potentially world-changing book I want everyone I know to read. How to write a book that will be read by the people who desperately need it because an identity is doing them harm but might be resistant to its message because to admit such harm would be a threat to that identity? Be from inside that world and write it as a sneaky half-memoir. Yates, brought up in a blue-collar family in Indiana, writes about the problems with (primarily) straight white American masculinity in a way that I think has the potential to reach men who would immediately dismiss a book more explicitly scholarly or more directly titled. The strength of Yates' work here is that it has no easy answers; he is not on some other side; he admits he is still struggling with the messages and meanings with which he was enculturated in his youth, but makes it clear that the struggle is worthwhile, has led him to a richer life, and has the potential to do the same for others. Everyone who has white men in their life should read this...and then leave it strategically lying around.