Middle Sex

I finished reading the novel Middle Sex by Jeffery Eugenides a few weeks ago and wanted to talk about it. I picked up the book randomly, not knowing whether or not it was well received (sans the NY best seller accolade on the cover). So I started reading it..

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

So, the book is about a hermaphrodite born Calliope (female) who now goes by Cal (male). To my surprise, the novel spans three generations to tell the story of how Cal's family ended up in Michigan and how Cal came to be intersex. In a way, the novel plays out like a three generation long Forrest Gump. Where Forrest Gump charts the life of a common man in the US from the 1950s onwards, Middle Sex plays out like an epic telling of the immigrant family assimilating into America. In Forrest Gump, Forrest finds his way into some of the most iconic scenes in American history (alongside John Lennon, JFK, etc). Similarly, the characters in Middle Sex find their way into cataclysmic events from the 20th century. While Jeffery Euginides places the characters in settings I was unfamiliar with, like Smyrna in Greece during the Balkan Wars, the entire novel is relayed through Cal's midwestern POV. As a result, I found these foreign events relatable.

The book speaks very little of the turmoil of actually going through a gender identity change. As it were, Jeffery Euginides didn't do any interviewing with intersex individuals stating,   

"[I] decided not to work in that reportorial mode. Instead of trying to create a separate person, I tried to pretend that I had this [physical feature] and that I had lived through this as much as I could".

He succeeds in creating a distinct voice in the narrator, Cal. However, Euginides decidedly focuses on events inspired by his own Midwestern upbringing and Greek heritage more than imagined events unique to intersex individuals. The resulting narrative is less about gender transformation than the diverse ways our lives can change throughout their course. The book charts the way 20th century America took in Europeans and spit out post-modern Americans three generations later. Because of its scope, each character illustrates distinct points during this slow transformation. The initial change takes place in nationality. Greeks become Americans (Cal's grandparents). The second change is from lower class to upper class (what up American dream?). While Cal's grandfather Lefty struggled to make ends meet, Cal's father Milton ends the novel owning a successful chain of hot dog joints (which are more lucrative than one might think). The final change is from Modernism to post-Modernism (I went there). Cal ends the novel living in Berlin, having gone through a gender identity swap, and beginning a fling with another exPat, who is Japanese/American. If Cal's parents came from a society that was racist (and similarly sexist), Cal is from a generation that is beyond both race and sex.

The story is long enough that I have distinct memories of the various settings in which I tackled the novel. It's not overly smart, and its accessibility is perhaps its greatest feature. It stands highly recommended.