What We Will Become: A Mother, A Son, and A Journey of Transformation

Debut author and transgender rights advocate Lemay tells the story of her four-year-old child’s gender transformation in this engrossing and compassionate memoir. Born in 2010, “Em” (a pseudonym) was the middle daughter of Lemay and her husband, a software engineer. Lemay’s story segues between her past as an ultra-Orthodox Jew born in Israel in 1976 and her coming to grips with her child’s gender identity. While attending college in Boston, Lemay abandoned Orthodoxy and later married a man outside the faith. Their daughter, Lemay writes, changed clothes 10 times daily, threw tantrums, and declared she was a boy at the age of two. Lemay sought the help of a social worker and learned that persistence, insistence, and consistency are signs that an individual may be transgender. After a near car accident with her three children in tow, Lemay decided to embrace Em’s trans identity, a difficult choice, she writes, given her rigid religious upbringing. Lemay came to realize how vital it is to nurture a child’s true nature—a decision reinforced by statistics revealing the high rate of attempted suicides by transgender individuals who are not supported. Lemay eventually helped Em, now Jacob, as he entered kindergarten. This fascinating, heart-wrenching memoir offers invaluable insights into issues of gender identity. (Nov.)