A beautifully written book from a transgender mother prospective that anyone who is fighting for a transgender boy/girl, man/woman should read.
Jodie Patterson has written a book from a mother's point of view of a mother fighting for her marriage, her husband, and her 4 other children and her transgender son, fighting for each one in all the ways that is individual for them all. Sometimes not getting it right but fighting all the same.
She brought with her the education of her grandmother, her aunt, and her mother and used all the black girl magic she could to fight and deal with her transgender son to the best of her ability, this was all new to her, her husband and they both death at different times but they were dealing.
This is a beautiful book for anyone dealing with this is read.

WOW!!! This book is very, very good!!! The mother in this book was a force to be reckoned with. The book is filled with wisdom and thought provoking words. What an awesome read. This book will stick with me for a long time.
Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

A mother's love is a force to be reckoned with. Someone has to stand up for our children, why not a mother. There's a saying, "behind every man there is a woman." For years women have been the unrecognized back home of the family. "Daddy" can walk away but mother's have been single parents raising their children and extended family members and friends for as long as time began. It doesn't surprise me that this black mother was her transgender son's greatest advocate and champion. Every parent should read this remarkable story. To those who think they are alone in facing challenges such as this, this may give you hope.

This was a really sweet book. As a trans person, it's really meaningful to read books about supportive parents. The world needs more families like this one who are accepting of their child and just wants them to be happy. Would recommend to parents of trans children who want to understand their child a little better and read about someone who understands.

This is an important and timely read about a mother's journey to accepting herself and her child who is transgender. I thought Jodie wrote an incredibly honest and eye opening memoir. She brings the reader into her life to see all the nuance that is involved in this story. I would recommend to adults!

This book was very different than I expected but it was also more than I expected. I expected a tale of a woman raising a trans gender child instead what I got was a rich history of an African-American matriarchy who have created strength, community, culture, and comfort to their family. It is a book about a family where gender roles were very specific and learning how to bend them. It is a beautiful book dedicated not to just Jodie parenting her son Penelope (he still wants to use this name) but to her family and her childhood and her discovery of who she is and where she fits as a wife, mother, and person.

Wonderfully accessible Pattersons thoughtful and honest ideas on gender and being black in America, of being a black woman in America are worth the read. There is so much to take away from this book my head is swimming. I am grateful that it crossed my path and that I was drawn to read it.

The Bold World is described as a memoir about raising a trans child, but it is far more than that. Author Jodie Patterson’s youth, education, and early years didn’t happen as a prelude to parenting her child, that is not how life works. Her story had meaning and value before she became a trans parent. That she was raised to be bold, even when she didn’t feel bold, would have served her well in any circumstance, but sure was useful when her three-year-old informed her that he was a boy. In an amazing and revelatory exchange, Penelope says, “Everyone thinks I’m a girl, Mama–and I’m not.”

Personally, I was impressed with Patterson’s response. “However you feel is fine. It’s what’s inside that counts.” And here is where this little three-year-old drops the mic. “I don’t feel like a boy, Mama. I am a boy.”

That this happens more than halfway through the book reflects that Patterson lived a full life. She comes from a long line of strong women. Her father was a force of nature. The family lived a life always aware of their own Blackness and their responsibility to the Black community, of activism and empowerment. For example, her father would only pay for her to go to a Black college. He and her mother fostered a woman who knew to be bold even if she didn’t know what she needed to be bold for. Of course, her father’s support of her bold self-determination was limited by his deep belief in traditional gender roles.

Patterson reacted pretty well to Penelope’s announcement. She approached it like any overachiever, researching everything and ready to tear apart anything and anyone in the way of her son’s happiness, but she had four other children and a husband. Learning balance was important, giving them room to support Penelope was also important. It all mattered.


I often start a new book as I approach the last quarter of the book I am reading. I will read a chapter, maybe two. I like knowing what is coming, I guess. Rarely, almost never, that book will grab me and hang on until I finish it, even when there is only a little bit left to finish something else. That’s what happened with The Bold World. Actually, it’s worse than that. I opened it about 1:00 a.m. thinking I will read a few pages and go to sleep. I finished it before I fell asleep sometime in the wee hours.

I loved this memoir. Patterson never uses the word international, but her life centers at the axes where the different valences of oppression intersect. She is raised steeped in the history of the Civil Rights Movement and African-American arts and culture. Gil Scott-Heron wasn’t just an inspiration but an “uncle.” Feminism also becomes central to her life with her father’s expectation that she be content with an M.R.S., not an M.A. Likewise, the self-imposed expectation of bearing all the domestic obligations, including childrearing. Not that the men in her life objected to her doing all the work!

However, imperfectly she navigated these barriers, she became an unstoppable force when she discovered she had a three-year-old boy who needed her to forge a path for him in a world that is constantly defining normal as more than a dryer setting.

I received an e-galley of The Bold World from the publisher through NetGalley

The Bold World at Ballantine | Penguin Random House

Jodie Patterson – author site and blog

★★★★★

The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation is both beautifully and powerfully written. Uncompromising in its honesty, and impressive in its handling of all societal topics covered, Jodie Patterson's memoir includes her childhood, dealing with various cultures, her early relationships and marriages, becoming a mother, becoming an activist for transgendered people and growing into her own self. Along the way she tells us:

what it means to be a woman,
what it means to be a black woman,
what it means to be a mother of a transgendered child,
what it means to be a boy born into a girl's body,
how she dealt with family, friends and others to educate others about what transgender means while doing her best to protect her child and his right to be whoever he says he is.

Multiple generations of her family were urged to live life boldly, to be unafraid, to love themselves as they are, to be strong, and to be loving. Jodie Patterson continues that with her own family. If only every child could be raised by such loving and empowering parents!

I honor Ms. Patterson for her strength, fierceness, and dedication towards moving the world forward in it's understanding and acceptance of differences.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballentine Books for allowing me to read a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Come and step into her world for a peek in her life. I am a huge fan of memoirs and this one blew me away with her raw honesty and no holds barred. I very much admire people who own who they are and their situation because there are so few of them and she is one of those people. Absolutely pick up this winner of a book. Happy reading!

Thank you to NetGalley, Ballantine Books, and Jodie Patterson for an ARC ebook copy to review. As always, an honest review from me.

Like:
- Hearing all of the author’s life lessons learned through there personal experiences, from friends and family, and through parenting
- The power of the Black Panther Movement for her
- Discussions of power
- Representation: trans boy in a black family
- The overall journey of her son and learning to be a part of the trans community

Love:
- The life lesson: to define yourself or the world will; distance yourself from anyone who said you need to be anyone other than yourself
- Her overall continual journey of personal growth
- The message that trans people don’t need to change their names, bodies, clothes, hormones, etc. to be considered a certain gender, or even need to identify with a gender, but they may choose to do so if it feels right to them

Dislike:
- Once someone refers to Penelope as not a real boy, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure who said it or what their intentions were, but still …
- Her father’s harsh way of parenting

Wish that:
- There was a little less about her childhood. While there were lots of great life lessons, it became a little long winded at times.

Overall, a good comprehensive memoir about the author’s life, journey through personal growth, advocacy and learning bout her son’s life as a trans boy.

It was important to me to read The Bold World to get a mother’s perspective of having a transgender child. What I found was so much more. As I read about Patterson’s childhood, struggles with relationships, and tenacity in finding meaningful and suitable work, I found myself want to reach further in my own life. Patterson takes us on a journey through her family history and the expression of what it is to be a woman and it is beautiful. The concept of self-love and respect was instilled in her from an early age and it is that lesson that allows her to be herself and be true to herself though all difficulties.
We need this background in all its fullness to truly understand how, when her daughter Penelope tells her mother she is a boy, there is no hesitancy to love her child for who he is. We need to know how much Patterson cherishes her history and identity as a woman to appreciate her tenacity to fight for her child and that “P” wants all the same things every child wants; to be loved, acknowledged, and accepted.
It is wonderfully refreshing to read about such open acceptance and what unconditional love really means. Readers may find themselves alerted to transgender issues they might not have even considered because it is not an issue for cisgender people. This is a good thing.
The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation will be available January 29 wherever books are sold.

I started reading this book expecting something a little different. Actually, I don’t really know what I was expecting to be honest. I was interested in learning more about parenting a transgender child and honestly thought the book would be mainly about that. But The Bold World is a lot more than that, it’s a deeply honest, beautiful, and heartfelt memoir of life, learning, challenges, and love.

Yes, The Bold World is about navigating the discovery that your three year old, Penelope, knows he is a boy rather than the girl that society decided he was at birth. But that is just part of the story, because the main narrative is how Jodie Patterson got to that point in her life, and where she and her family have moved to since then. It is a memoir of growing up as a black girl in a somewhat traditional family setting, with parents who made sure her and her sister had a wide and varied knowledge of who they were and where they came from, but where gender-specific values were clearly defined. It is a memoir of self-discovery, of climbing mountains and barreling through challenges, of growing up, and of being human.

For some reason I was surprised at just how much I related to Jodie’s narrative, and how moved I am by this book. I often see my life as a jigsaw puzzle where I am constantly trying to make pieces fit while running on a treadmill backwards with my little humans pulling me in all directions. Obviously my children are not Jodie’s children, but I have a similar personality and mindset to hers’ and related to so much of what she says. We have similar parenting styles too, which made me smile a lot while reading. I admire how honest she is in her book about her life, her thoughts, her relationships, her parents, her children... I feel like a lot of it must have been difficult to write. And her honesty is an inspiration to all of us to be more forgiving of ourselves but also more open to seeing the world differently.

The other day my three year old said to me “I’m not a boy I’m not a girl I’m just RORA!!” - What else could I say but “yep you are Rora”? It’s up to us to let go with the rigid gender assignments and just accept that strict boxes are not the direction this world needs to be going in. I didn’t grow up in a very traditional household at all, but those rigid gender boxes still take a hold on us, and I really appreciated seeing how Jodie navigated through her choppy waters and how her family came together as one to grow stronger together.

The Bold World is also beautifully written: Jodie brings you into her family as if you are part of it, and I honestly feel like we are good friends now (I wish?!). I think many people will appreciate her insight, warmth, and honesty. I’m so glad I picked this one up, as once I started it I couldn’t put it down!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this book!

This is a heartfelt and refreshingly honest memoir of a mother working to make the world a better place for her transgender son. Jodie Patterson has a wonderful and clear voice throughout the book, and sharing her story of acceptance and love for her son is so important. My only criticism is that the first half of the book feels like a different memoir than the second half. It could have used a little more of a common thread to tie her early life to her life after Penelope was born. But overall, it's such a meaningful story told with such heart.

I got an ARC of this book.

I went into this book with a bit of apprehension because of the name Penelope being used and then the book being about a trans person, but not by the trans person. I was blown out of the water though. This book is so much more than I ever expected and addressed my issues and then some. So If you were on the fence about this book, let me convince you you need to read it as soon as you can get a copy.

First, Penelope is the name that Penelope wants. At no point has this wonderful young person asked for a different name. Patterson makes it more than clear that the family would do everything they could to support him. There was even a wonderful section about passing and what that means to a black person. That was an insight that is often not brought up when passing is brought up in trans spaces. Instead there is the fight over if passing makes you more or less trans, if passing should be something anyone aims for, and then the ever present judgement of levels of passing. I am pretty sick of the infighting when it comes to the idea of passing, Patterson puts some of my ideas into words that are much more poetic than I could have managed on my own. We need to let people live their lives the way they want to. Penelope keeping his name does no one else harm. If you can’t get behind someone having the strength, courage, and determination to live their truth, then please walk away. Your negativity is not helpful and attacking someone you don’t agree with will not change their mind or their soul. Learn to express love and strength. Learn to speak up for yourself. Learn to support others.

Second, this book really is really more about Patterson and how gender has shaped her life. The book does feature her trans son and her other children. While the book seems to be more marketed as a memoir of a trans parent. It comes across more of a memoir of a strong woman coming to terms with gender itself. She was confronted with very strict gender roles and expectations as a child. The way her parents interacted, the way she was allowed to exist was so deeply trenched in gender roles and gender norms. Something that didn’t seem to really be on her radar at the time, though she had some thoughts and some ideas. The more that Patterson examines her own idea of how gender has impacted her life, the more support and love she seems to be able to have for all of her family. She learns through supporting her children that her husband needed more time to process things. That she had to be willing to listen to opinions of people, even when they weren’t as caught up to things as she was. I am beyond in love with this book.

Patterson talks about the intersection of race and gender, specifically being black and being female. This is heavily examined throughout the book. I was all for it. There was so much I wanted to ask, so much I wanted to learn. I am thankful that Patterson wrote this book and gave an insight into her life. Near the end of the book, Patterson even starts to analyze what it means to be black and trans. That was something that is often missing in trans discourse. A great deal of the research is done on white people. The great deal of the dialogue that is easily accessible is by white people. This is changing to be more representative of the real world, Patterson offers one explanation at why this change is taking longer than a great deal of us want. It is not the only explanation and like a lot of Patterson’s explanations, there is room for more and other explanations to play together and compliment her ideas. It makes sense that variant genders and expressions are hidden away by a group that is often over scrutinized and attacked for any form a deviance (even when that deviance is just literally existing) by outside groups.

Patterson is awe inspiring. She is strong. She is powerful. She is intelligent. She is flawed. She is human. She is exactly the sort of person that I dreamed I would have as a mother. She supports and loves her kids. She does this with a level of intensity that I just can’t imagine. So many of my trans friends have lost their families and have been abandoned. Seeing a mother that is so deeply there for her child made me cry more than once while reading this book. Patterson is a hero in my eyes. She has gone above and beyond to help all of her children and is willing to own up to her mistakes. She works hard to better herself and better the world for everyone. I am only slightly joking when I say that if Patterson offered to adopt me, I would say yes without a second thought.

This book is deep, it is moving. It is exactly what I needed. I needed to see that the world is changing for the better for trans kids. That my experiences are becoming less and less common. That there are kids out there that will not be fighting tooth and nail just to stay alive, despite being trans. Instead they will be living and thriving while being trans. It is such a remarkable difference and one that I am truly blessed to see happening in my life time. I am tearing up again, just thinking about how much good Patterson has done in such a short time of being an ally to her son. I wish her and her family the best. I hope they continue to do amazing things in the world and I am thankful for the things they have already accomplished.

An eye-opening, interesting memoir about race, class, gender, and the Intersectionality of it all. Will definitely appeal more to adults than to teens!

This book is exactly what we need in this world. Whether you know a trans family or not, this book will change your thinking about trans people, trans families, society as a whole, the LGBTQ+ community, and yourself as a human. I truly believe that. We control our narrative, and this book is a great reminder of that. As a side note-as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I would have given anything to have parents like Jodie and Joe. They are people that will make this world a better place. I'm truly a better person for reading this book.

The Bold World is one of those books that actually took me a while to "understand." In the early chapters, Patterson sets up the memoir as if it would be about her personal transformation throughout life-- and in a way, it is--- but The Bold World is about so much more. It's about identity and, more specifically, gender identity. It's difficult to follow this thread throughout the book because the memoir shifts rather abruptly from focusing on Patterson's life to her son's life. In retrospect, though, the information Patterson provided helps us understand her reaction to her son's news.
****
At times, I found myself getting frustrated with Patterson's choices. It seems hypocritical of me because I know very well how deeply your childhood can influence your adulthood, but there were some obvious choices and solutions that seemingly would have solved Patterson's problems. Of course, it always seems easier to solve a problem from the outside looking in. If you're a young person, it may benefit you to speak with someone older because there are things Patterson does that just /don't make sense/ to our generation. Patterson is closer to my parents' age than my age so their insight helped.
****
In the end, Patterson and I agree that our various identities (gender, race, religion, nationality, etc) are not separate and that the baggage/struggles that come with them are all tied together. Fighting for less popular causes is not less important than fighting for the causes that constantly make headlines, especially when it comes to peoples' well-being. I'm giving The Bold World 4 stars because the name-dropping was super annoying and because it took me until almost the end of the book to "get" it (and I'm NOT new to the topic of gender and race relations). Despite these relatively minor flaws, The Bold World is well-written, entertaining and informative. If you're a parent with a trans kid, if you're genderqueer yourself, or if you're just interested in reading about different walks of life, I recommend this novel. After you read it, go read Negroland (Margo Jefferson) because it also discusses the life of a privileged black person in the mid-late 1900s, but it focuses more on the ways race often outweighed financial status.
****
Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group (via Ballantine Books), for the advanced reader copy.

Incredible memoir. I read it on Netgalley and I ordered it today for our library. Tackling everything from race and gender to parenting and being a strong woman-her writing is engaging and powerful and I had my eyes opened to all sorts of new perspectives. Very grateful to have come across it.

Beautifully written, this is the story of a strong and determined woman and mother. The story does not focus solely on the struggles of raising a transgender child, but is also the story of Jodie’s life. I loved the honesty in this book and hope it helps us to become more accepting of those who struggle to be who they want to be and helps us not to be judgmental.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Like its author Jodie Patterson, this book is small but has a lot going on inside it. Some great advice on how to raise a strong black family, how to value and celebrate marriage-merging of cultures, and how to instill confidence in a transgender child. Also an interesting and honest look at difficulties the author faced in both her marriages and variegated career; and finally her transformation from a young mom running a beauty business who exaggerates gender norms in her early parenting ("pretty girl" "pretty girl" "pink and purple" "pink tutu" "head-to-toe pink" "plastic dress-up high heels" "hyper-boy, tough-boy, assertive-boy") into a champion advocating for transgender rights for her fifth child.

I read about this family's general parenting methods with a grain of salt, massaging children's limbs at night to relax them into sleep, singing them songs in the morning to make those first moments of being awake a little less disorienting? This description of a mom's love for her daughter: "I loved her fiercely, and I felt for her with the passion of a possessive lover". Also, sleeping 3 hours a night, and working 12 hr days? Yikes. I found the adoption of the full-grown teenager who already had his own mom and grandmother rather vague, and at times the name-dropping got unwieldy, like when she allowed Madonna's friend to watch her kids get naked and bathe.