note that this is criticism of how this was told, not meredith the person or the content of her life! i didn’t totally connect with talusan’s storytelling choices; her favorite films and plays got pages and pages while her brother’s tragic death got a few throwaway lines. i do understand that this memoir’s focus was meant to be more on her journey to living as/accepting her identity as a filipina woman, but even there i wish we’d spent more time with meredith after harvard as she spent more time living openly as a trans woman.

ultimately i don’t want to be overly critical of how someone chooses to interpret their own life, because in the end it’s not like it’s any of my business how she grappled with the loss of her brother, her post-transition life, etc. but i think these choices + the distant tone kind of dampened the reading experience.