Mike’s Reviews > Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers > Status Update

This is a mixed ending. I'm not sure if this is precisely what the book was building up to, since the first half is so badly-organized, but it still manages to hit an emotional note.

On the whole, a decent book, but it would've benefited from tighter editing and better organization. And, ultimately, I would rather read a book written by a member of this community than an outsider. Still, there's some interesting information, and Beam does have a story to tell.

I wonder if Christina - or any of these other characters - ever got any sort of mental health support. I find it interesting that Beam doesn't even address it - they've all been through trauma, and Christina in particular shows a lot of signs of PTSD/BPD.

Part of the problem with this book is how badly-organized it is. There's no introduction summing up Beam's intentions, which was a huge mistake. She just seems to be talking about a bunch of things that happened to her and the people she knew, without bothering to create a coherent structure or even maintain a discernible chronology.

The language Beam uses just isn't how people talk about trans people anymore, especially in the fact that she uses people's birth names and deadnames when she talks about their past. I'm giving Beam the benefit of the doubt by assuming that it's only because the book is a decade old, and things used to be different. But still, it makes the book hard to read.