Bonnie G.'s Reviews > In the Darkroom

A remarkable exploration of identity - gender, national, religious and other.

What are the chances that the father of a noted feminist scholar will decide to fly to Thailand for gender reassignment surgeries? That she will do so skipping over the psychiatric and medical therapies that typically precede surgery? That she will do so without sharing her gender dysmorphia, or her surgical plan with anyone in advance? And if you are a feminist scholar how do you respond when your father embraces a binary view of gender, declares that she is a woman and then behaves in accord with ridiculous stereotypes about what it means to be a woman, being submissive and matching your shoes to your purse and waiting for men to open doors? These things are of course entirely performative and have nothing to do with what it means to be a woman. But that leads to the question "what does it mean to be a woman?"

It turns out though that this is only the very tip of the iceberg in this exploration of identity. Faludi's father was a Hungarian Jew in the 1930's and 40's. He hid by passing as a member of what was essentially the Hungarian Gestapo while his neighbors and classmates were murdered all around him. Faludi's father then fled, first to Brazil and then to the US, and decided he was not a Jew. He immersed himself in regular listening to all the 1970s and 80's televangelists, placing the biggest star on the block on the family's Christmas tree right in the front window of their home. And then Faludi's father, in his later years after his divorce, returned to his native Hungary. After a time went to Thailand and had MtF gender conforming surgeries and began identifying female. She then returned to Hungary where she disparaged Jews and supported a far right anti-semetic and anti-LGBTQ+ strongmen. She proclaimed often and intensely that she was not a Jew she was a Hungarian and she was not trans she was a woman. After all her paperwork says so. Faludi's journey, amidst all of this, to explore the meaning and structure of identity is illuminating and fascinating.

Faludi does this while also navigating her identity as a daughter to this very difficult parent. Stephanie is narcististic and cruel, likely dealing with PTSD (which she denies.) She walks all over everyone. She also abused Faludi's mother and tried to stab to death her mother's boyfriend (they were long separated and embroiled in a a protracted divorce.) It is a lot to unpack, but Faludi does it masterfully. She explores the personal while also keeping the narrative focused on the larger truths and lessons. There is a good deal of discussion of Erik Erikson's theory (he himself a self-denying Jew who changed his name to the most Aryan possible construction) that when we feel the loss of identity we are drawn to things certain and brutal, that we build new identity around pegs like racism and anti-Semitism. (In the book this discussion is focused on Hungary, but it applies everywhere and it resonated with me, especially in light of the 2016 election, Charlottesville, and the coup attempt on the Capitol.)

I recommend this book for everyone. It is truly extraordinary, and provides a structure to think about that most universal of subjective truths, identity.