The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood
Krys Malcolm Belc
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood
Krys Malcolm Belc
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
This is a gripping testament to marital and parental love to be enjoyed by any reader, and powerfully informative for any person considering a similar path to the one so courageously chosen by Belc..
In the crowded genre of memoir about mothering, Krys Malcolm Belc's debut, The Natural Mother of the Child, asks: What do we do with someone who is parenting the child they gave birth to, but is not a mother at all? Where do transgender and non-binary parents fit, especially in a world that is determined to force them into a box labeled 'mother?'.
Belc’s memoir troubles easy understandings of gender and parenthood. At the same time, the author’s particular journey demonstrates a universal truth: parturition brings not only a baby, but also transformed adults, into the world.
When Krys Malcolm Belc sees pregnant women, he turns the other way. He doesn’t want to hear pregnancy stories and finds it difficult to share his own. But in The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood, the transmasculine author doesn’t turn away from his story. Instead, he lays it out page by page, with pictures and legal documents juxtaposing his poetic prose.
Belc breaks from conventional memoir formulas into non-linear narratives, plural and second-person addresses, and forms that resemble lists, as if to show that memoirs, like families, do not have to be structured a certain way just because the establishment deems it so. The second-person addresses are at times written to Belc’s partner Anna, at times to his gestational child Samson, and at times to his own mother. Sometimes, it seems Belc is writing to himself, contemplating, for example, his unwanted breasts, those same organs he uses to nourish Samson.
Arranged in patchwork fashion (several essays were previously published), this intimate tapestry of a family includes numerous anecdotes about many of Belc’s formative moments and experiences.