★ 2020-01-02
A searing, deeply personal story about the author's emotional journey of self-discovery.
"This is the question of my body and my story about it: is it just mine?" So writes Whitney (Creative Writing/Goddard Coll.; Ghost Box, 2014) early on in the narrative, which is fragmented, elliptical, and consistently provocative. The author tells their story in three parts, each beautifully poised and composed of brief paragraphs, some only one short sentence. Piecemeal, like snapshots, Whitney slowly reveals an early life of uncertainty, pain, and suffering: "I grew up knowing fear as an inheritance of femininity." The story washes back and forth in time as the author reflects on their sexuality and family: Mom and Hank, two brothers, Tye and Gunnar; and Grammy. Along the way, Whitney interjects bits of literature and psychology, wisdom gleaned from a variety of sources, including Freud, Lacan, Allen Ginsberg, Johanna Hedva, Robert J. Stoller, Luce Irigaray, and Eli Clare. Mom is the key to this story. "As a kid," writes Whitney, "I was a flame in the corner lighting up all of Mom's mistakes." Chronicling their mother's drinking, being physically abused, splitting with her husband, and moving around as she tried to raise her family, Whitney does a fine job uncovering their complex relationship. "This book," they write, "isn't about individuation or even coming of age…it's about ways to find a response, to respond to her." About Grammy, the author writes, "I love this woman for throwing me into deep water….My heritage is her hopefulness and the complexity of a body that looks, in parts, like hers." The author recounts adolescent years filled with questions, fears, drinking, drugs, cutting, boys, girls, and homelessness—as well as a bad reaction to testosterone. Upon meeting other trans kids, writes Whitney, "I was the happiest around them I'd ever been." In 2011, the author underwent breast removal surgery: "I've edited my body, mixed my skin around with some money."
An incisive, nuanced inquiry into gender and body.
A finalist for the Believer Book Award
Named a best book by Kirkus, Bomb, the AV Club, PAPER, Literary Hub, Refinery29, Ms. Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, the Observer, and the Seattle Times.
“Whitney stands as a deft executor of their own unique style… a writer who guides with an intuitive vulnerability and honesty.”
—The Paris Review
“An incisive, nuanced inquiry into gender and body.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Melodic and engagingly written, Heaven will enrapture anyone who loves reading for beauty and intellectual challenge at once.”
—Literary Hub
“Emerson Whitney’s first prose book is a frank and absorbing examination of transness, brokenness, mothering, femininity, embodiment and truth.”
—Ms. Magazine
One of the Observer's Best Books of Spring
“Heaven is an unflinching personal examination of family and identity, bearing witness to what it means to live life on one’s own terms.”
—Foreword Reviews
“A gripping memoir whose sentences are akin to a skipped heartbeat”
—PAPER, best books to buy in Quarantine
"(U)tterly hypnotic... a gorgeous book that feels like a painting"
—The Seattle Times, Women's History Month Reading List
“(W)hat Heaven does best is capture the disorienting pull of unsettling childhood memories—at once incomplete and terribly weighted.”
—AV Club
“Provocative, emotional, infinitely faceted... a reminder that messiness is at the heart of all beautiful things”
—Refinery29
