My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation

by Molly Haskell

A feminist film critic’s thoughtful, outspoken memoir about transgender and family

On a visit to New York, the brother of well-known film critic Molly Haskell dropped a Nearing age sixty, and married, he had decided to become a woman. In the vein of Jan Morris’s classic Conundrum and Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There, a transgender memoir, Haskell’s My Brother My Sister gracefully explores a delicate subject, this time from the perspective of a family member.

Haskell chronicles her brother Chevey’s transformation through a series of psychological evaluations, grueling surgeries, drug regimens, and comportment and fashion lessons as he becomes Ellen. Despite Haskell’s liberal views on gender roles, she was dumbfounded by her brother’s decision. With candor and compassion, she charts not only her brother’s journey to becoming her sister, but also her own path from shock, confusion, embarrassment, and devastation to acceptance, empathy, and love.

Haskell widens the lens on her brother’s story to include scientific and psychoanalytic views. In an honest, informed voice, she has revealed the controversial world of gender reassignment and transsexuals from both a personal and a social perspective in this frank and moving memoir.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Gender Studies

224 pages, Hardcover

First published September 5, 2013

About the author

Molly Haskell author and critic, grew up in Richmond, Va., went to Sweet Briar College, the University of London and the Sorbonne before settling in New York. She worked at the French Film Office in the Sixties, writing a newsletter about French films for the New York press and interpreting when directors came to America (this was the height of the Nouvelle Vague) for the opening of their films. She then went to The Village Voice, first as a theatre critic, then as a movie reviewer; and from there to New York Magazine and Vogue.

She has written for many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian UK, Esquire, The Nation, Town and Country, The New York Observer and The New York Review of Books. She has served as Artistic Director of the Sarasota French Film Festival, on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival, as associate Professor of Film at Barnard and as Adjunct Professor of Film at Columbia University.

She is married to the film critic Andrew Sarris. Her books include From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies (1973; revised and reissued in 1989); a memoir, Love and Other Infectious Diseases (1990); and, in 1997, a collection of essays and interviews, Holding My Own in No Man’s Land: Women and Men and Films and Feminists. Her newest book, part of the Yale University Press's American Icon series, is Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited.

Reviews

[Bethany · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehhhh. I was wandering the new books section at the library and picked this up because I accurately guessed from the title that it was about someone's transgender sibling.

Well... really it ended up being more about the "someone" than the "sibling", the someone being Molly Haskell. I would have preferred to hear more about Ellen's journey, instead of Molly's. The book was mostly full of how Molly felt about everything and oftentimes she expressed herself in a way that came off as rather ignorant and transphobic. Is that the price of being brutally honest about one's thoughts and feelings? I don't know.

Though what I really enjoyed was her talking about the society of where her family grew up: Richmond, Virginia. Which is where I grew up! And currently live. (No wonder there was a copy in my library...) I would've liked to read an entire book about Richmond in the 50s. Apparently it was very classy... and snobbish.

[Peggy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish this book had contained a lot more about Chevey/Ellen and lot less about the author herself. The author came across to me as a tiresome pill who seemed to lack any real empathy for her Chevey/Ellen. Really, one of her first concerns is whether Ellen will be able to fix computer problems the way Chevey did?? Haskell never seemed concerned about Ellen's happiness; instead she was embarrassed and self-conscious about Ellen's clothes (hair too blonde, the wrong jeans, etc). Chevey/Ellen seemed to have lived a lifetime of being there when Molly needed him/her but the reverse doesn't seem to be true.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an interesting topic but, like any book, a bad author can ruin it. Haskell's sidelines about mythology and references to film criticism detract from the story. Her habit of inserting interviews with her brother/sister verbatim as paragraphs into the text come across as lazy writing. A sense of privilege pervades the book; one wonders what life is like for transsexuals who are not born to wealth or have the means to afford surgeries and a new life. Haskell's frequent name- and place-dropping are irrelevant to the reader but seem very important to her.

Overall, her problems seem very small compared to those of most people in this situation. Her worst dilemma seems to be, "How will my well-to-do, liberal acquaintances react?" Please.

There have got to be better books on this topic out there.

[Celeste · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only reason I read this so fast was because I wanted to get away from the author as fast as possible but didn't want to waste the time I had already spent reading by putting the book down. I won't go into detail, but, in short, she acts as if she's "accepting" when she's truly far from it. A very, very selfish, disrespectful, hypocritical trash-talker. To her own sister.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

One summation of this book I read has a line "despite the author's liberal view on gender roles...". SO inaccurate. She actually says her brother has always been the one to help her with computer problems and she asks him to promise her that when he becomes a woman that he will not lose the ability to help her troubleshoot her computer woes.
Hard to believe she is a feminist film critic or a feminist anything.

[Florence Buchholz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molly Haskell's brother has just announced that at age sixty, he is planning to become a woman. This book chronicles that event in emotional and physical detail. She also tells about the effect it has on family members and casual acquaintances. Chevey (the brother) is quite determined to go through with it, though the life of a transsexual is frought with dangerous complications. Physical violence is a possibility. People are afraid of things they don't understand. But it seems the worst that can happen is that someone will "read" him as a man dressed as a woman. By the end of the book, I admired Chevey for his courage and Molly for writing the book at a time when she was facing her own personal challenge.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a disappointing book written by the sister of Ellen Haskell, who was a successful businessman who changed his gender in 2010 when s/he was 59. Molly, the sister, seemed intolerant and upset that her brother’s changes were interfering with her life and the lives of his ex-wives. The author, a well known film critic who writes from a feminist perspective showed little concern for her brother’s feelings. She was more concerned that he wasn't an "authentic" woman than she was for the trials he went through to journey from one gender culture to another.

[Jennifer Parks-Strack · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not finish the book. In an air of transparency, the author shared some sexist and anti-trans remarks that I could not get past.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in the story, but did not love the author. It would have been amazing to hear the story from Ellen's perspective, and not her sisters.

[Jo Halbe · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book. I found it a delight to read - emotional, revealing, genuine, literary, considered. It is obvious that Molly Haskell invested herself fully, both in the process of - slowly - accepting a new person in her life - her new, transitioned, sister - and painfully saying goodbye, in part, to her brother. My Brother My Sister is chock full of the results of research, of Greek myths, comparable accounts, and much more importantly, her personal bewilderment, doubts and even upset and anger. Haskell is transparently human, imperfect, real in how difficult she found the process of her brother's transformation, and how organic her new acceptance was.

I am aware that other reviewers have given fewer stars and made some criticisms that are based in fact. The book isn't deeply about Ellen Hampton, her new sister, although nobody could say that there is none of Ellen in it. Indeed it's about Molly Haskell's reactions, her process of exploration, her own transformation in feeling. Ms. Haskell plainly stated her anger or disdain for other transgender people, suggesting that her mind found it difficult to broaden itself a great deal. Fair enough - but so what - I loved it anyway.

I make notes on every book I read, but this one attracted more dog-ears from me than any I can remember. Ms. Haskell nearly manages it but does not quite hit the mark on many aspects of transgenderism, but one has to cut her slack, as it's not a topic well understood by many, and she tackles it from many angles and takes risks. The language - nearly always using the word "transsexual" is a bit dated, but given that her family is Richmond, Virginia blueblood, I can make allowances for writing from the previous century.

Something Molly Haskell addresses very well, in the fact that her former brother, transitioned to Ellen, started much later in life than is typical nowadays, and that brings its own concerns, as well as advantages. Women are judged on their looks and older women have it particularly difficult in this regard. Those issues are addressed, if not in full, then truthfully.

I found the whole of the treatment to be full of humanity, of true warmth. And I was endlessly entertained by Ms. Haskells literary flair, in the best sense. I wish I could share a conversation with the author, as well as with her sister, to catch up on where they are, emotionally and existentially, now. Sequel please!! A veritable pleasure.

[Mia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is so out of date. Times have moved quickly in the world of trans-gender understanding and this book is a sort of old-fashioned view of gender. Unable to accept her brother’s assertions that he was a female, the author seeks understanding by reading books written by other famous transgender people and psychologists and psychiatrists who treat individuals with gender dysphoria. She seems unable to get through her stages of grief at the loss of a brother,stuck in denial and needing “proof” that this is real. That is a lot like reading about the afterlife when the fact is that my brother died a few months ago. I hope that with the passage of a decade, the author recognizes that the world has many people who feel misgendered, that gender is a continuum and that her sister is a real person, and not her brother in disguise. Verdict: out of date, useful only as an example of the bad old days.

[William Stanger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I would enjoy this one a bit more than I did. It wasn't a bad book, but it fell short of what I expected. I think I was hoping for more of things from Ellen's perspective than from the author herself. Other than that, though, it was fairly interesting, but I thought that some of the author's perspectives were bit unfair, given the fact that it wasn't her that was going through the transformation, but rather her sister (previously her brother).

[Betty · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had its good parts, when it actually talked about Ellen. However, most of the book was the author thought about all of the transformations, etc. There was too much talk about what the "research" shows. That is not why I wanted to read the book!

[Nik Lipchik]

DNF. This could have been a lot better if the author actually talked about Chivey/Ellen more and not herself the whole damn time. I didn’t pick this up to hear about the authors grappling with their sister. Makes sense why Chivey didn’t want her writing a story about it in the first place 🙄

[Kartika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read...I'm trying to understand more about this subject and this book helped.

[David Stockard · Rating 2 out of 5]

2:56:15

100 pages- 1:26:08
200 pages- 2:48:48

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some might say this wasn't PC, but I found it bracing and honest.

[awesamsauce · Rating 2 out of 5]

most laziest most contrived “perspective”

[James Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a 64 year-old transgender woman with a sister who is two years older. We were close as kids in a rather dysfunctional Irish-Catholic family. I'm now 64 and she'll be 66 in September. I mention this because we are of a similar age as were the author and her brother when he began his transition to become a woman at just about the same age as the author's brother when I began my own transition. That was over a year ago and my sister has been very supportive while coming to terms with having two brothers and a sister, rather than three brothers. Thus, my hope was that the book would be helpful to both my sister and myself. I sent a copy to my sister and she told me she was familiar with the author and had considered reading it. I am writing this review without benefit of her perspective.
I rated it as highly as I did because I believe Molly Haskins did her best to be honest about her thoughts and feelings, and to try to include the perspectives of her "brother's" two ex-wives. Kudos for that.
While Molly does show some growth in her acceptance of her new sister, I believe her"proper" conservative upbringing as a Southern Belle bleeds through her narrative all too often, despite her admitted attempt to escape it by trying to become a cosmopolitan New Yorker.
My main complaint is that she "cherry picks" what research she summarizes in her chapter on transsexual/transgender medical research. For example, she fails to report the post-mortem research demonstrating differences in the brains of transgender/transexual male to female persons when compared to the brains of "normal" male brains. Though they share the same XX chromosomes, the brains of transgender women share a characteristic difference found in those born with the definitive XY chromosomal configuration, I.e., genetic women. Not proof, but clearly pointing toward confirmation of the transsexual/transgender insistence that they did not choose to be transgender. Haskins also fails to reference the work of Anne Fausto-Sterling, Professor of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University, whose long term work has pretty well put to pasture the notion that there are only two sexes (she has defined five) and two genders. If Haskins was really looking to support her brother's adimant declaration that he did not choose to be transgender, how did she miss this research, in particular the work of Fausto-Sterling,who is a world renowned researcher and feminist, the latter of which Haskins also claims to be.
I am a life-long New Englander, born and raised in northeast Massachusetts and now living in central Vermont. I did live for a year in Columbia, South Carolina. It is a very different world. I say this because Haskins' very southern pretentiousness leaks through her narrative in a most annoying manner. Her concerns about" appearances" and what others might be thinking reveals more about her own narcissism than it does about genuine concern for her brother.
By the final chapter, Haskins does seem to have come to terms with the reality of having lost a brother and gained a sister and does seem to have become sincerely happy for Ellen, her new sister and Ellen's new life.
I would be quite remiss if I failed to mention that Haskins also dealt courageously with the slow and painful death of her beloved husband as Ellen's transition was unfolding.
Ultimately, I think this is the story of a strong woman doing the best she could under difficult and unforeseeable circumstances, and her brother become sister who also demonstrated the extraordinary courage and grit required to endure the full transexual transition she so successfully completed.
All told, this book was not quite what I expected and hoped it would be,but it is a very good book, that I do recommend.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with this book a bit, because for me, the subject is fascinating and full of endless surprise and intrigue---ah, the many shapes and forms that humans can become! The author, however, despite claiming to be open minded, a feminist, and a liberal, was full of judgments and presupposed ideas about her transexual brother. It especially bothered me that she worried about being in public with her--what would people think?! But in the end, I liked her and her story a bit more, as it became clear that she was simply sharing and revealing all the fears and crap that was rolling around in her head as this process was happening. She appears to really love her sister now and this book could appeal to and open the eyes of others who aren't quite as accepting as I am.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had really looked forward to reading this memoir by Molly Haskell about her brother who undergoes gender reassignment surgery. I struggled to get through it b/c early on, there was discussion that was generally uninteresting (to me) about the meaning of gender, etc.

She eventually gets into how she feels about it but it seemed to take her a LONG time to come around and be comfortable with her brother/sister, who she portrayed as such a kind, nice person. I wanted to see her be more accepting.

Overall, the book was only 200 pages, but I thought it was inferior to other books I've read on this topic.

[Mica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I read a lot of LGBTQ books and felt that a story from the sibling's perspective could be interesting. However, I found the author's writing to be wordy and hard to get through at times. (She would have said it was verbose and pedantic. See what I'm saying...) It's as if she couldn't put aside her film critic voice long enough to discuss the actual topic at hand. I also had a hard time with how...almost intolerant she seemed and how much she whined about how hard it was for her. I understand grieving the loss of a brother, but some of the paragraphs were really hard to get through as someone who is not conservative in the least bit.

[SalSF · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book about the effects on a family of a man becoming a woman. The brother of the title chose to become a woman at age 59 after two happy marriages. He had a good life and continues to have one as a woman. Getting an inside look at her transformation and how it affected those around her is moving and enlightening. Molly Haskell is a great writer of anything. Her memoir is as good as her film criticism. I highly recommend it.

[Alaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written memoir of an older woman whose younger brother chooses to transition in his late fifties. While I find the topic fascinating and have read about transsexuals elsewhere, this book still offered new insights and a thoughtful approach to the topic. At the same time, Haskell doesn't hold back from expressing her ambivalence and sense of loss--not to mention her wincing criticism of some of her new-sister's fashion sense. I'm glad I read this book.

[Kristen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was more of a story about the author's reaction to her brother's transformation to her sister than about her sibling's transformation. Her brother, now sister, initially did not want her to write about it, but changed his/her mind when he/she decided that there were a lot of transgendered people that needed help and she thought a book could help them. I'm curious to know if the resulting book was viewed as helpful by the him/her.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a story about the writers brother who decides to go through gender transformation. I was looking forward to hearing the story and the personal parts were interesting and well done. There was too much research and too much sociology and history that dominated the book but overall we'll written.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molly Haskell's brother transitions to her sister. Thoughtful account of the thoughts and emotions caused by a family member's sex change. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, a look into a subject that is not often discussed openly by those it impacts.

[Laurel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thought it would be interesting, but gave up after chapter 2. Writing was flat, lifeless and boring. Reads like a textbook.

[Megan]

My interview with Molly Haskell: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/feature...

[Gretchen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to read this; got about 1/3 of the way thru. Grew very weary of the author's own "hang ups" and while she claims to be a liberal feminist, not really "getting it."