The New York Times - Parul Sehgal
[Stein] depicts her subjects with warmth and respect, and strains to include as much as she can about the social, emotional, medical and psychological dimensions of transitioning. The result is frantically overstuffed but earnest, diligent and defiantly optimistic…Stein repeatedly allows herself to be impolitic and wincingly frank, almost using herself as a foil for the limitations of second-wave feminism…Throughout the book, however, Stein is full of admiration for the transgender men she meets—especially as they challenge her. And toward the end of her investigation, a new note creeps in, one of wonder.
Publishers Weekly
04/09/2018
Stein (Reluctant Witnesses) tracks the rapid evolution of gender identity in this provocative group portrait of trans men. The book opens in the waiting room of a South Florida plastic surgery clinic, where four patients are scheduled to undergo “top surgery” (chest masculinization) on the same day. For the next year Stein follows the four subjects as they recover from surgery and grow accustomed to their new bodies, interviewing their friends, families, and acquaintances. While in the past passing as cisgender was the goal, Stein finds these days people are just as likely to reject the gender binary outright and claim trans as their own identity. Of Stein’s four subjects, Lucas makes a point of coming out as trans, Parker is interested in passing in the traditional sense, Nadia chooses to change her body but not her gender, and Ben is still figuring out where he is most comfortable (meanwhile he uses social media to keep people updated, posting a photo of the bandages and tubes on his chest). The book also notes the prominence of reality television and social media in creating space for more gender identities to flourish by making “the personal eminently more public.” Stein posits that trans identity as it exists right now in younger people is less an act of survival and more an act of self-reinvention. Though Stein finds no tidy conclusions, her book succeeds in documenting what it means to be trans today. (June)
From the Publisher
"Earnest, diligent and defiantly optimistic....What gives this book its real heat — is more personal; it’s the challenge posed to [Stein's] own cherished beliefs."
—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
“A book written by a sociologist who writes like a novelist. It's a rare nonfiction page-turner and an important book.”
—Rebecca Makkai, Conde Nast Traveler
"Sensitive....A much needed primer for those who are puzzled by contemporary discussions about gender."
—The New Yorker
“Moves beyond the popular fixation on bathroom politics to explore individual lives.”
—The Washington Post
“Moving.... By allowing her subjects to speak for themselves as those selves are reinvented in various ways, Stein leaves room for productive conversations to appear.”
—Harper’s Magazine
“For readers bewildered by how to make sense of gender today.... Having received rave reviews, for those wanting to learn more about transgender people, especially as their issues continue to make news, Unbound serves as a useful primer.”
—The Bay Area Reporter
“Stein tracks the rapid evolution of gender identity in this provocative group portrait of trans men....Her book succeeds in documenting what it means to be trans today.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Arlene Stein brings insight, wit, and generosity to this perceptive analysis of the dazzling shifts in how we imagine, and live out, gender today. Unbound will surprise readers who thought they had this figured out decades ago.”
—Janice Irvine, Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts
“A new sociological study on transgender individuals and their experience transitioning. This significant book provides medical, sociological, and psychological information that can only serve to educate those lacking understanding and awareness of an entire community of individuals who deserve representation. A stellar exploration of the complexities and limitations of gender.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“If you’ve been trying to make sense of how gender today seems to have slipped the chains that bind it to our bodies in familiar ways, Unbound is a book for you. It’s a sympathetic account by non-transgender sociologist Arlene Stein, aimed at a primarily non-transgender audience, of four people assigned female at birth who surgically masculinize their chests. Stein helps her readers understand that they, too, no longer need be bound by conventional expectations of the meaning of our flesh.”
—Susan Stryker, founding co-editor, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly
“In this gripping, illuminating and clear-eyed portrait of what it means to be transmasculine in today’s America, Arlene Stein does justice to an oft-misrepresented topic. A vivid and fiercely empathetic narrative that juxtaposes nuanced portraits of these young people with a clearly articulated understanding of what it means to navigate a culture that treats gender minorities with contempt, ignorance, and violence. Unbound is a revelatory read that fills an important role in gender studies.”
—Ryan Berg, author of No House to Call My Home
“Unbound is a timely and critical response to the loud silence permeating the current public discourse on gender and transgender experiences, especially the lived realities of transgender men within the US. A critical and stunning work that will shift the ways gender has been politicized and imagined. Should be required reading for all.”
—Darnell L. Moore, author of No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2018-04-03
A new sociological study on transgender individuals and their experience transitioning.In her latest, gender theorist Stein (Sociology/Rutgers Univ.; Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, Their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness, 2014, etc.) follows the lives of four individuals who have gone through the process of transitioning from female to male. The author states that her book is a "group portrait of those who choose to remake their bodies and lives using the tools they have at their disposal." Stein spent considerable time with her subjects, Ben, Parker, Lucas, and Nadia, each one existing at different levels of the transgender spectrum. Ben, who grew up in a highly supportive environment, never identified as a woman; he had large breasts and struggled on a daily basis with his body image. As a result, he started hormonal treatments and eventually underwent top surgery to fully transition from female to male. Parker is a prototypical Californian, though he is from Virginia. Muscular and blond, he referred to himself as a "gurl" and dressed as a tomboy. He was outspoken and refused to wear the clothes his parents wanted him to wear as a girl. Lucas' identity fits near the intersection of male and female—i.e., he identifies neither as a man nor a woman but rather "somewhere masculine of center." Finally, Nadia wishes to modify her body but still wants to be recognized as a woman. Stein takes readers on each one of these individual's incredible journeys, shedding a rigorous, respectful, and highly studied light on the experience of transgender individuals today. For example, "transgender men," she writes, "are not simply retrieving the male that resides within; they're also creating themselves." This significant book provides medical, sociological, and psychological information that can only serve to educate those lacking understanding and awareness of an entire community of individuals who deserve representation.A stellar exploration of the complexities and limitations of gender.
