In the acknowledgements of Becoming a Man, P. Carl notes that by publishing his story, his publishers are not "just publishing a memoir, but affirming the reality of trans lives as a vital part of the American landscape." Carl is right in more ways than one: the book itself is also more than just a memoir, as Carl uses his own personal experience of transition to examine closely the gendered social, cultural and political context of 21st-century America.
Carl calls his story "a layperson's anthropological exploration of living a double life," a theme that resonates as Becoming a Man unfolds. He recalls what it was like to live for more than 50 years as a girl and woman who was dismissed and intimidated on the basis of gender, then reflects on his own ability to dismiss and intimidate as a man. He writes candidly about his relationship with his wife, first as one half of a lesbian couple, then as one half of a couple that seems, from the outside looking in, to be straight. He dissects his role in his family, watching westerns with his father as a child and later, as their aging son, caring for his dying parents. Throughout the pages of Becoming a Man, Carl grapples with his personal "contradictions and questions." His raw candor elevates Becoming a Man to more than "just" a memoir, to use Carl's own words: it is a story that is both deeply personal and yet reveals universal truths--and asks big, difficult questions--about how all people experience gender. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm