Rating: 
Summary: Making the Strange Familiar
Review: This evening I had the great pleasure of hearing Noelle Howey read from her memoir DRESS CODES. This is not a book it would ordinarily occur to me to pick up, but Noelle's voice and extraordinary storytelling ability makes DRESS CODES a must-read. From page one I was hooked. What is so compelling about Noelle Howey's story is how she makes what at first glance seems so strange - a father becoming a woman - into an every-family story (she grew up in Ohio, what is more middle-America than that?). Do yourself a favor and read DRESS CODES.
Rating:
Summary: TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE...
Review: This is a well-written memoir by a remarkable young woman who, at the age of fifteen, was made aware of the fact that her father was suffering from gender dysphoria. It seemed that her father enjoyed cross dressing and had decided that he would prefer to do so all the time. He had come to a realization that he was actually a transsexual and not just a transvestite. This wryly funny memoir, which is not just the author's memoir but that of her mother, as well, and, to some extent, that of her father, though, as in life, his essence remains the most elusive. The author is clearly an intelligent, perceptive young woman, and she lays bare her parents' relationship, to the extent that she can, with their blessing, as well as her recollection of growing up in a household where the father was evidently deeply troubled by his gender issues. She outlines the impact that this had on him and, consequently, on her and her mother, as well as on the family dynamics. She fully discusses the changes that his coming out about his gender issues would confer upon them all, both good and bad. Informative as well as entertaining, the author manages to infuse a great deal of perceptiveness in analyzing the familial relationships. She supported her father's decision, though some of the issues that she had with him were not as a direct result of his gender dysphoria, but rather with the way he treated both her and her mother as she was growing up. Still, as someone who grew up in a seemingly traditional nuclear family, only to find herself in a non-traditional one, the author has remained remarkable sanguine about the entire experience. This is a wonderful book that gives a birds-eye view of the experience of living with someone who has gender dysphoria. It is also gives the reader a peek into a family that was simply trying to cope the best way that they knew how, given the little that they knew about what was really at the core of many of the troubling dynamics within the household. It is a book that grounds what some may perceive as an unreal situation in the context of a vital family that was simply struggling to survive a complicated situation into which they were thrust by forces beyond their control. It is a portrait of a family in pain that survives and comes to terms with its permutation.
Rating:
Summary: crossing over
Review: This story integrates the perils of growing up with the identity
crisis of their father. What is he and why is he acting this way. The author describes how the family learns to adapt to a very odd situation. The father is faced with the enigma of coming out over the threat of losing his family. What is mor eimportant, his psyche or his relationship with his family,
especially his daughter.
Rating:
Summary: An astonishing accomplishment
Review: What the author has done is not "merely" tell her story, one that might scandalize some readers, extremely well, but has also achieved something quite singular, made more amazing by her youth. Howey shares her family saga -- at times heart-rending, hilarious, and always heartfelt -- all the while in total control of her emotions, in a memoir that revels in the lives of its subjects. Never maudlin nor preachy, trite or Prozac Nation-esque, Dress Codes is a truly special book by an author whose mastery of language and story structure will doubtless make her a force to be reckoned with in the future.
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