Something That May Shock And Discredit You

by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

A New York Times bestselling feminist author's sparkling memoir of gender transition (among many other things).

Reasons for Transitioning- Want to impress good-looking ex; Want to upset good-looking ex; Bored of existing wardrobe, looking for excuse to buy all-new clothes that don't fit in a new way; Younger siblings getting too much attention; Neoliberalism??; Want to sing both parts of a duet at karaoke; Something about upper-body strength; Excited to reinforce a different set of sexist stereotypes; Cheaper haircuts; Just love layering shirts ...

From the beloved writer behind The Toast and Slate's 'Dear Prudence' column comes a personal essay collection exploring popular culture, literature, religion, and sexuality. With wit and compassion, Daniel Mallory Ortberg revisits beloved cultural and literary figures in the light of his transition.

'At last, we have the work of transgender bathos we didn't know we needed, but very much do ... Ortberg's narrative is anything but linear- It skips back in time to mythic Greece, traipses across the landscape of contemporary pop culture and, in one wonderfully fabulist entry that would make Carmen Maria Machado proud, slips outside of time altogether ... One of our smartest, most inventive humour writers, Ortberg combines bathos and the devotional into a revelation ... By broadening what transgender memoir can do, the author is in good company with Viviane Namaste, who decades ago diagnosed autobiography as "the only discourse in which transsexuals are permitted to speak." Ortberg partakes of neither the damaging trope of tragic transness nor the sentimental sanctimony that we are "permitted," offering instead the comic and the transcendent.'
-Jordy Rosenberg, The New York Times

' A memoir comprised of the humorous essays that have become his trademark ... Some are essays and some are scripts or imagined conversations; at first the chapters and interludes are distinct, but at a certain point they start to blend together. All are hilarious, infused with the type of magical thinking Lavery excels at. They weave Lavery's life experiences together with his historical and pop-cultural obsessions.'
-Claire Landsbaum, Vanity Fair

'Ortberg's playful takes on pop culture as he explores everything from House Hunters to Golden Girls to Lord Byron, Lacan, and Rilke ... Ortberg's writing is vulnerable but confident, specific but never narrow, literal and lyrical. The author is refreshingly unafraid of his own uncertainty, but he's always definitive where it counts ... You'll laugh, you'll cry, often both at once. Everyone should read this extraordinary book.' STARRED REVIEW
-Kirkus Reviews