For NPR, I review Meredith Talusan’s gorgeous memoir Fairest:
“This nuance, this careful attention to looking and attempting to understand this journey not just from her own perspective, but also from those affected by it, gives a welcome maturity, depth and resonance to Talusan’s memoir. One of the most touching scenes in the book is in the beginning of Talusan’s transition to womanhood. Talusan’s partner, Ralph, just wants her to look “normal,” as he calls it and asks Talusan to dress like a man, without make-up, for a friend’s important event at Carnegie Hall. Talusan promises — but when she goes to the bathroom to scrub her face free of make-up, she cannot, eventually collapsing crying on the floor. To erase her make-up, to erase her femininity—to make herself look like a man when she is a woman — is destroying her in that moment. And Ralph, hearing her pain, comes into the bathroom and hugs her. He tells Talusan that he will never ask her to take off her make-up again.
The make-up, a stand-in for true selfhood and identity, functions in conversation with the usage of the mirror, a central grounding conceit for Talusan’s flights into astute analysis of race, gender and sexuality not just here, but elsewhere in the book.”
hope wabuke 