Men I Hate: A Memoir in Essays [Paperback]

A rare spouse's perspective on a partner's transition that asks what happens to us when the people we are closest to change.

Can a lesbian who loves a trans man still call herself a lesbian? Against the backdrop of a traditional Sicilian American upbringing, Lynette DAmico identified as a lesbian despite the expectation that her future hinged on the man she married. As a teenager, she fled her St. Louis home in the dark of night to escape her fate. No boys allowed, until one day DAmicos life was completely upended when her lover and spouse of twenty yearsP. Carl, the acclaimed author ofBecoming a Man: The Story of a Transitiontold her he was a man.

Seemingly overnight, DAmico no longer recognized her spouse in photos of past vacations or of the couple celebrating their legal gay marriage. InMen I Hate,she asks: What happens when the people we are closest to change? As DAmico tries to engage more deeply with the man she is married to, she looks at all the menhistorical figures, politicians, men in her familyin search of clear dividing lines between good men and bad, between the men she loves and the men she hates. These lines dissolve as she writes her way toward an understanding of the wordsmarriage,husband,andhomeand how we reconcile who we are with who we become.

A memoir in essays that examines love, marriage, and identity in light of a spouses transition, asking what happens to us when the people we are closest to change.

Men I Hateperforms the surgical accomplishment of dissecting a life while enacting a delicate transition from rage and fear into empathy and understanding. DAmico gifts readers life-sustaining insights by immersing them inside the exhilarations, frustrations, and exhaustions of being a daughter, a lesbian, a wife, a writer, a patient, a citizen, and a human. Without shying away from the complicated details of a life that demands shifts in how shl+