Krys Malcolm Belc

"Essentially this book is a heavily visual memoir-in-essays that explores how the experience of gestational parenthood-conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding my son Samson-eventually clarified my gender identity and allowed me to project a different more masculine self. Ruminating on how the experiences contained under the umbrella of "motherhood" don't fully describe my experience amplifies the outsiderness the speaker, who is almost always addressing a cis "you," sometimes his mother, sometimes strangers, mostly his cis female partner. Instead of using a straight narrative, the book circles around this concept of motherhood and of my relationship to it. The book is also an archive of my queerness, of childhood photos of me smiling impossibly wide, of my original birth certificate and the legal documents surrounding Samson's adoption. It's a direct engagement with the documentation we think constitutes a record of one's life. The book ends on an exploration of how much we can really know when we enter into parenting a person, and of my ambivalence about the "before" and "after" that is so prevalent in trans stories and that feels so outside my experience as a nonbinary transmasculine person"--

A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood

The Natural Mother of the Child

Krys Malcolm Belc's visual memoir-in-essays explores how the experience of gestational parenthood—conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding his son Samson—eventually clarified his gender identity. Krys Malcolm Belc has thought a lot about the interplay between parenthood and gender. As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity. And yet, when his partner, Anna, adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as “the natural mother of the child.” By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of “motherhood” don’t fully align with Belc’s own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. With this visual memoir in essays, Belc has created a new kind of life record, one that engages directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one’s life—childhood photos, birth certificates—and addresses his deep ambivalence about the “before” and “after” so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own experience. The Natural Mother of the Child is the story of a person moving past societal expectations to take control of his own narrative, with prose that delights in the intimate dailiness of family life and explores how much we can ever really know when we enter into parenting.

Krys Malcolm Belc

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