Dunham skilfully traces gender journey

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/11/2019 (2483 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Chatting with some non-binary folks recently, it was agreed we have likely entered the “Yes… and?” phase of personal accounts of gender journeys.

That’s the tipping point that occurs whenever a cultural phenomenon reaches a saturation point where simply being part of that phenomenon is not enough to sell a book.

The “Yes… and” as it relates to A Year Without a Name is that the author is Cyrus Grace Dunham, the younger sibling of the ubiquitous white feminist brand known as Lena Dunham.

Prior to this new memoir, Dunham’s claim to fame was making a cameo in Lena’s memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, where an icky TMI memory of childhood sexual exploration, with Lena as instigator, caused a brief online uproar.

The title A Year Without a Name covers the period where the younger Dunham, who was assigned female at birth, comes out as transgender after years of body dysphoria, and decides to get chest surgery and live as a non-binary person, using the gender-neutral pronoun “they.”

The book is lucid, and the story visceral and movingly told.

“When I was 13, I found swelling under my chest, under my nipples, while I was in the shower. When I pressed the skin it hurt. I screamed, ran out of the bathroom still wet and told my mom there was something wrong with me, that I was growing tumours. She said it was just the beginning of my breasts growing. ‘Like flowers,’ she said. ‘They’re called breast buds.’ I had dreams of cutting them out with a knife, like pits from a peach, and throwing them into the dirt so they could grow somewhere else.”

Through a series of trials, missteps and mentors, the author finds a name for what ails them, and it’s Cyrus. The book is a compelling journey into growing into and owning a moniker that matches one’s outside with a shifting and confusing inner life.

Cyrus is one of the trans folks lucky enough to have supportive family. After coming out as trans, Cyrus’s mother texts, ‘‘Good morning, sunshine. Or should I say, good morning, son-shine.” When the insurance company denies Cyrus surgery because they haven’t lived as the opposite gender for six months, their parents pay for the procedure.

On the other side of hormones and surgery, non-binary Cyrus is passing in public as male. The author quickly realizes it’s a different way of being in the world: “People don’t talk to me in public the way they used to… When I am friendly, I often sense strangers’ discomfort, as if I am only being kind in order to get something.”

Gender is tricky, even for those going through their journeys. While the book is a bit light for the price, this well-written and artful memoir is an important primer and a powerful read and for anyone perplexed by life beyond the binary — as I was initially. It’s a good investment.

Lara Rae is a trans woman who medically transitioned in 2015. She teaches literature courses at McNally Robinson Booksellers and the University of Winnipeg.