The Barnes & Noble Review
There is a striking moment early in In the Darkroom, the remarkable memoir by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Susan Faludi. First, some context: the author, whose parents divorced when she was a teenager, has barely spoken to her father in twenty-five years when, in 2004, she receives an e-mail informing her that Steven, at age seventy-six, has had sex reassignment surgery and is now Stefánie. "I have had enough of impersonating a macho aggressive man that I have never been inside," Stefánie explains.
Faludi is best known for the 1991 bestselling feminist classic Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, and In the Darkroom makes clear that her feminism emerged in large part as a reaction to growing up with the domineering Steven, whose malevolent bullying, by the end of her parents' marriage, had escalated into violence. Not long after receiving her father's shocking news (Faludi had no hint that such a profound change was coming), she visits Stefánie in Budapest, her father's birthplace, to which he had returned fifteen years earlier. There she finds the "overbearing and autocratic" patriarch of her memory replaced by a self-identified "lady" clad in high heels and pearl earrings and crowing about how men now help her with everything. "I don't lift a finger," she tells her celebrated feminist daughter. "It's one of the great advantages of being a woman. You write about the disadvantages of being a woman, but I've only found advantages!"
That loaded remark hints at how fraught it will be for Faludi and Stefánie to reinvent their relationship, a project that is both personal and professional as Stefánie promptly asks Faludi (or dares her, in the author's view) to write her life story. To be sure, there are charged gender dynamics: Stefánie, at times an almost menacing figure, seems to take pleasure in making her daughter uncomfortable by undressing in front of her, saying, "Oh, come now. We're all women here." Yet gender becomes merely one axis of analysis that Faludi explores; as she attempts and often fails to understand her inscrutable father, the book becomes a rumination on larger questions of identity. "Is who you are what you make of yourself, the self you fashion into being," Faludi wonders, "or is it determined by your inheritance and all its fateful forces, genetic, familial, ethnic, religious, cultural, historical? In other words: is identity what you choose, or what you can't escape?"
Stefánie's "fateful forces" are particularly complex. He was born István Friedman in 1927 to wealthy but almost criminally inattentive Jewish parents, with a childhood that was sad and lonely until it became far worse, a terrifying struggle to survive the Nazi occupation. He lived through World War II, after which he left Hungary, Judaism, and István Friedman behind, renaming himself Steven Faludi. Once he made his way to the United States, according to his daughter, he "was eager to present himself as a model of postwar American manhood, with wife and children as supporting cast." (A convertible and a house in the New York City suburbs, complete with a basement full of tools, rounded out the picture.) Faludi, who delves into Hungary's long and dark history of anti-Semitism, links this initial transformation to the Hungarian tradition, amply evident in anti- Semitic literature, of feminizing Jewish men. Because Steven, seemingly incapable of self-reflection, later experienced his divorce as abandonment by his family, from his perspective he was denied his proper place both in Hungary and in his suburban home. "As both European Jew and American Dad, my father's manhood had been doubted, distorted, and besmirched," Faludi writes.
Faludi seems to be searching for motives beyond gender identity for her father's transition; the degree to which this goes against conventional wisdom about the transgender experience is demonstrated by the fact that even an elderly high school classmate of her father's warns her, in the author's words, "not to conflate religion and gender." When she asks whether her father always felt himself to be a woman, however, the elusive Stefánie offers no satisfying response. "As far as I could tell, becoming a woman had only added a barricade, another false front to hide behind," Faludi laments. "Every road to the interior was blocked by a cardboard-cutout of florid femininity, a happy housewife who couldn't wait to get 'back to the kitchen.' " Before it was the kitchen, it was the darkroom: the book's title derives from Steven's profession as a photographer who, in a time before Photoshop, specialized in retouching images for fashion magazines like Vogue and Glamour. He excelled at techniques known as "dodging," lightening dark areas, and "masking," hiding unwanted parts of a photo. By the end of In the Darkroom, it is genuinely moving that Faludi has achieved a hard-won closeness with her difficult parent. Still, so many of her questions, large and small, remain unanswered. Stefánie, who died last year, was dodging and masking to the end.
Barbara Spindel has covered books for Time Out New York, Newsweek.com, Details, and Spin. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies.
Reviewer: Barbara Spindel
The New York Times Book Review - Michelle Goldberg
In the Darkroom is Faludi's rich, arresting and ultimately generous investigation of her father, who died in 2015. It is partly an inquiry into the meaning of gender, a subject Faludi, the famous feminist, sees very differently from Stefánie, who hewed to traditional notions of masculinity and femininity both as an overbearing patriarch and as a coquettish old woman. But in trying to understand her inscrutable father—Jewish Holocaust survivor and Leni Riefenstahl fanatic, man and woman, a sly fantasist whose tallest tales turn out to be true—Faludi transcends feminist debate. The book, which traces the decimation of her father's prosperous, assimilated Jewish clan during World War II, his improbable survival and then reinvention in Denmark, Brazil and America, and his gender metamorphosis at 76, becomes a complex act of forgiveness.
The New York Times - Jennifer Senior
…an absolute stunner of a memoir—probing, steel-nerved, moving in ways you'd never expect. Ms. Faludi is determined both to demystify the father of her youth…and to re-examine the very notion and nature of identity. In doing so, she challenges some of our most fundamental assumptions about transsexuality, most notably by suggesting that the decision to change sexes may sometimes involve more than gender-identity questions alone. It's a position I imagine that will invite pushback, and almost certainly—understandably—anger. Trans activists would be quite right to point out that we cannot infer much of anything about transgender concerns from a single case study…But in telling her father's story, Ms. Faludi is also adding a layer of complexity to this evolving canon of literature, and she's doing it with typical brio. Having spent a lifetime interrogating conventions of gender, she's uncannily suited to write this book.
Publishers Weekly
★ 05/02/2016
Pulitzer-winning journalist and feminist author Faludi’s wrought and multi-layered memoir focuses on the life of her father, who came out as transgender and took the name Stefánie at the age of 76. In 2004, after nearly 25 years of estrangement, Faludi ((Backlash) and Stefánie reunite in Hungary following Stefánie’s transition to explore her past and reconnect. Faludi dives into Stefánie’s enigmatic past with a journalist’s dogged lust for truth. During a decade of visits to Hungary, where her father relocated after a contentious divorce, Faludi examines Stefánie’s complex psyche in the context of centuries of Hungarian history, with an emphasis on the war years when Stefánie was an adolescent Jewish urchin on the streets of Budapest. Through research, conversation, and relentless probing, Faludi paints a vivid picture of the war and the tormented lives—and deaths—of Hungarian Jews. (In one dramatic scene, Stefánie, disguised with a pilfered Arrow Cross armband and cap, rescues her own parents from the Nazis). The author also sheds light on the dangerous climate of prejudice and racism that persists in Hungary. This is a powerful and absorbing memoir of a parent/child relationship. (June)
From the Publisher
“This book is a masterpiece.”—Ann Patchett
“In the Darkroom is an absolute stunner of a memoir—probing, steel-nerved, moving in ways you’d never expect. Ms. Faludi is determined both to demystify the father of her youth—‘a simultaneously inscrutable and volatile presence, a black box and a detonator’—and to reexamine the very notion and nature of identity.”—The New York Times (daily review)
“Penetrating and lucid...In the Darkroom is Faludi’s rich, arresting, and ultimately generous investigation of her father.”—The New York Times Book Review (front page)
“A gripping and honest personal journey...that ultimately transcends family and addresses much bigger questions of identity and reinvention.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Riveting...Ms. Faludi unfolds her father’s story like the plot of a detective novel.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Many great writers eventually turn to biography, but rarely does it so directly crash into their lifelong intellectual pursuits....Few can dissect a prevailing cultural norm as well as Faludi can.”—The Washington Post
“Fascinating.”—People
“Faludi’s eloquent, timely, and sweeping-yet-intimate new book...is a mash-up of genres and themes about family secrets, masculinity and femininity, feminism, violence, the Holocaust, taking revenge. Knitting it all together are questions of identity: Who—or what—makes us who and what we are? How immutable is the end result?”—Elle
“Sometimes, reality delivers up not just a remarkable story, but a remarkable story containing a set of parallel motifs that seem too absurdly perfect to be credible. . . . Most of In the Darkroom, and the best of it, consists of the epic battle, and eventually the epic rapprochement, between Susan and [her father] Stefánie—an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.”—Slate
“Extraordinary: part riveting family memoir, part revelatory Holocaust history, but most of all a profound meditation on human identity....In the Darkroom is nothing if not timely. It is also highly significant....We live in an age overflowing with bitter battles over identity—with too little of Susan Faludi’s humane desire to understand.”—The National Book Review
“A wrought and multilayered memoir...Powerful and absorbing.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A moving and penetrating inquiry into manifold struggles for identity, community, and authenticity.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Wow. Susan Faludi’s new book is so good. Like a really dry martini. Pow!”—The Observer (London)
“Astonishing, unique...Should be essential reading.”—The Irish Independent (Dublin)
“A record of Stefanie Faludi's extraordinary life, and an unsettling interrogation of that modern obsession, identity....Few have asked these questions with such riveting precision.”—The Spectator (UK)
“In the Darkroom is a unique, deeply affecting and beautifully written book, full of warmth, intelligence and...humour. It makes a flawless weave of biography and autobiography with an examination of identity politics, Hungarian history, the Holocaust and the reparable bond between parent and child.”—The Saturday Paper (Australia)
Library Journal
★ 08/01/2016
Faludi, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (Backlash) presents the story of her father, who, after 25 years of estrangement, informed the author in 2004 that she had undergone a sex change operation in Thailand, changing her name from Steven to Stefanie. To say that her father is mercurial is an understatement. Yet, Faludi tries to tease out the reasons for Stefanie's drastic decision and also reconcile this new person with the man she knew as a child: temperamental, masculine, obfuscating, and violent. The author is obliged to acknowledge and repeatedly check her own bias as a prominent feminist, since her father seems intent on defining womanhood in decidedly retro terms. Faludi's attempts to grasp the various experiences that led her father down this path include an exploration of the history of modern transsexuality as well as Stefanie's dark childhood as a Jew growing up in Nazi-occupied Hungary and assuming other identities in order to survive. Faludi delves into the complicated politics of Hungarian nationalism, anti-Semitism, and evolving gender concepts. Despite her fraught relationship with her father, Faludi regards Stefanie's choices with nuance and compassion. VERDICT An incomparable memoir that is sure to provoke discussion. Highly recommended for all readers.—Barrie Olmstead, Sacramento P.L.
SEPTEMBER 2016 - AudioFile
Narrator Laurel Lefkow shines most brightly when recounting the most difficult moments of Susan Faludi’s life—her conversations with her father after years of estrangement and the news of his sex reassignment surgery at the age of 76. Lefkow captures moments of fragility and nuance as Susan’s father, now Stefi, overshares some information while deliberately avoiding and obscuring other events. Much of Susan’s story involves her experience of growing up in a difficult home environment, the child of Holocaust survivors from Hungary. Lefkow ably handles the passages of exposition, giving extensive background on gender identity, anti-Semitism, and the Jewish experience in Europe during WWII. This immersive story about a father and daughter illuminates so much more. A.F. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2016-04-19
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist investigates the "fluidity and binaries" of "modern transsexuality."In 2004, after hardly any contact with her father for 25 years, Faludi (The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, 2007, etc.) received an email from her, announcing that she had undergone a sex change operation in Thailand. Steven Faludi was now Stefánie. "I have decided that I have had enough of impersonating a macho aggressive man that I have never been inside," she explained. Aggression is what her daughter remembered: she had been an "imperious patriarch, overbearing and autocratic" during the author's childhood. Now she reached out to her, inviting the author to write her story. The author's discoveries about her elusive, mysterious, dissembling father are central to this gripping exploration of sexual, national, and ethnic identity. Steven grew up in Hungary in a wealthy Jewish family that owned two apartment houses. After World War I, when the nation lost more than half of its population and landmass in a peace agreement, anti-Semitism surged, intensifying during World War II. To save her parents from extermination, Steven impersonated a member of the violent Arrow Cross and led them to safety. Moving to Brazil and later to the United States, she married and had two children. She was roiled when his wife sued for divorce. "As both European Jew and American Dad," the author writes, "my father's manhood had been doubted, distorted, and besmirched." "Now, as a woman, women like me more," she said. A professional photographer deft at manipulating images, Stefánie proved just as deft in revising her biography, challenging Faludi to ferret out truths from her many lies. The writer communicated with relatives, her father's few friends, and surgeon; transgender females, in interviews and memoirs, share their often disturbing life stories. A moving and penetrating inquiry into manifold struggles for identity, community, and authenticity.
