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53
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
21/100Critics
86/100Scholars
Author:
Meredith Talusan
Publisher:
Viking
Date:
May 26, 2020
A journalist looks back on her complex personal journey, from her childhood in the Philippinesâwhere she was raised as a boyâto her young adulthood in the United States, where she attended Harvard University and often passed as white due to her albinism. Finally understanding herself as a trans woman, she underwent gender transition surgery and has found self-acceptance in a complicated web of identities.
What The Reviewers Say
An Ivy League-educated scholar of literature, Talusan deftly evokes the themes and motifs of 'traditional' trans narratives, all the while refusing to settle for easy answers to the questions raised by a life lived beyond the conventions of gender, race, and class identity.
In Fairest's carefully nuanced and detailed analysis, Talusan articulates the ways in which people of color create solidarity when there are only one or two non-white individuals in these elite, predominantly white spaces of privilege.
.... render[s] an intellectual debate intimate.
At each step of her journey, Talusan interrogates the complex intersection of who she feels herself to be and how others perceive her. Through this fearless self-awareness, Talusan demonstrates her intellect, creativity, sexuality and, most of all, a true dedication to expressing her inner self. For anyone who has wondered how their identity is impacted by the ways others see them, Fairest is an extraordinary story of one woman’s self-reckoning..
