Gender Artist: A mother's poems about raising a queer child in a straight world

At once brilliant and brave tender and gut-raw Lee Schwartzs Gender Artist explores and documents a mothers response to her childs gender transformation. These are poems that shatter and satisfy convincing us that the deeply-examined life is the only kind worth living. Gender Artist is a must-read. - Robin Greene author of The Shelf Life of Fire and Real Birth Women Share Their StoriesSchwartz uncovers the hard-fought fullness of herself as the mother of someone not he or she but all of it. Each poem unlocks a new door leading us down an unexpected passageway of struggle and understanding.- Susie Kaufman retired hospice chaplain and author of Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement (Wipf and Stock).We all fear for our children. What if our beloved daughter began to wear mens underwear and declared I feel more like a man than a woman? Gender Artist by Lee Schwartz traces the intimate journey of mother and child in moving beautifully-rendered poems.- Sonia Pilcer is a poet playwright and the author of six novels including The Holocaust Kid.In Lee Schwartzs storied poems one gender artist is the child trekking out to pitchers plate / leaving her cello on the floor while the other is the mother who goes on to find the man in me. This mother shudders and marvels as her daughter becomes a man - her child as Houdini on Who am I? day in second grade. Packed with similes and metaphors these are startling poems that will linger and foment.- Elaine Sexton author of Prospect/Refuge