Casey Parks
Auteur de Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery
Œuvres de Casey Parks
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
Membres
Critiques
Listes
Prix et récompenses
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 2
- Membres
- 97
- Popularité
- #194,532
- Évaluation
- 3.6
- Critiques
- 3
- ISBN
- 5
This is about Parks searching for the truth about Roy, the trans man who lived across the street when her grandma was growing up. Who was he? What was his life like, given how conservative and Christian the area still is? Is there anything to the story about him being kidnapped from his birth family? To the country music career?
But really, it's about coming out and growing into yourself and having parents (and a country) who do and don't accept you. It's about poverty and dysfunctional families and pain and trauma. It's about a mother whose life never went right, and a daughter who struggles with not being good enough to make up for it. It's about the power of role-models, of community, and of seeing others like you. It's about love, and it's about the stories we tell.
It's also about the rural, Christian, American South. Parks doesn't shy away from the realities—the racism, the homophobia, the small-town gossip, the poverty, the opioids—but she also writes with love and heart. The people she talks to are people, not caricatures of themselves or included to serve a political agenda, and that's clearly a deliberate choice. There is misgendering, from people who clearly cared deeply for Roy. There is honest, compassionate discussion of what opioid abuse, and child abuse, look like in the day to day. There are no good people, no bad people, just complicated ones.
And really, that's the heart of the book. Life is complicated. People are complicated. The past is complicated. Diary of a Misfit is powerfully, beautifully written; introspective and poignant; and above all, heart-breaking. If that sounds like your jam, you should absolutely read it. (Be mindful of your triggers, but read it.)
Side note: No, the real cover doesn't suck as much as this one, but it's close. I'm hoping they change it for the paperback.… (plus d'informations)