Title: Dear Mom and Dad: You Don’t Know Me, But …
Author: Georgia Lee McGowen
Publisher: Toplink Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-947938-87-8
Pages: 327
Genre: Memoir / LGBTQ
Reviewed by: John Murray
Pacific Book Review
Gender identity is best defined as one’s own experience of their gender and not necessarily correlated to genetic sex. A subset of transgender identity is the fairly rare bi-gender or dual-gender – a recent study finding less than 10% of transgender identified participants self-identifying as bi-gender. The unique part is that bigender is literally two distinct personas sharing one body, with one in “control” at any given time.
Dear Mom and Dad: You Don’t Know Me, But … by Georgia Lee McGowen examines a bi-gendered person through the lens of one of the personas. The author, Georgia, introduces the driving persona of her shared body and follows his life until she comes onto the scene. While she was always present in the body, George was not truly aware of her until later in adulthood. From childhood to adulthood, Georgia highlights the ups and downs of George’s life.
As stated above, bigender identity is somewhat rare. As such, a memoir penned by such an individual seems like a fascinating way for people to understand firsthand the trials and tribulations. This is a challenging objective. Despite sharing the body, Georgia doesn’t really come into play until late adulthood after a series of traumatic events in George’s life. George’s childhood occasionally delves into his gender confusion yet the bulk of the book is dedicated to the stage when George and Georgia learned to share their body.
George/Georgia need to coexist among the common pitfalls of George repeatedly sleeping around, casually abusing his child and abuses substances recreationally which makes the book a different type of read. Retrospectively, Georgia seems aware of these but that doesn’t excuse the character flaws. All of which contributes to a story which is within LGTBQ+ community and shows the many aspects unique to this group as its stated purpose of the book is to help gender confused people find a purpose in life.
As a bi-gender focused memoir, Dear Mom and Dad: You Don’t Know Me, But … leaves readers with more questions than answers. The nature of their shared consciousness, Georgia’s “birth” not occurring until George’s adulthood and other concepts remain unanswered. Despite these criticisms, the author wrote an honest account of a life that’s difficult for most people to comprehend yet is psychologically very interesting. This book made me think about the world today, with transgender bathrooms being an issue and military involvement rules changing. Nowadays, we constantly are opening up to new concepts and ideas which we have not discovered, but sometimes certain people can get in the way of the path others need to follow to become their version of themselves. Dear Mom and Dad: You Don’t Know Me, But … will definitely help readers be more educated and accepting about bigenders, and really just about all of the diversities in people in general. After all, the world can always benefit from more love and kindness, and this book does a great job in promoting both.
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