The award-winning journalist and activist presents a coming-of-age memoir that describes her experiences as a Filipino boy with albinism, a white immigrant Harvard student, a transgender woman and an artist whose work reflects illusions in race, disability and gender. - (Baker & Taylor)

"A heartrending immigrant memoir and a uniquely intersectional coming-of-age story of a life lived in duality and the in-between, and how one navigates through race, gender, and the search for love"-- - (Baker & Taylor)

Finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction
 
"Talusan sails past the conventions of trans and immigrant memoirs." --The New York Times Book Review

"A ball of light hurled into the dark undertow of migration and survival." --Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

A singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender

Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a "sun child" from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America. Coping with the strain of parental neglect and the elusive promise of U.S. citizenship, Talusan found childhood comfort from her devoted grandmother, a grounding force as she was treated by others with special preference or public curiosity. As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white. An academic scholarship to Harvard provided access to elite circles of privilege but required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality, and her place within the gay community. She emerged as an artist and an activist questioning the boundaries of gender. Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved. Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni's Room. Her evocative reflections will shift our own perceptions of love, identity, gender, and the fairness of life. - (Penguin Putnam)

Meredith Talusan is an award-winning author and journalist who has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, WIRED, SELF, and Condé Nast Traveler, among many other publications, and has contributed to several essay collections. She has received awards from GLAAD, The Society of Professional Journalists, and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. She is also the founding executive editor of them., Condé Nast's LGBTQ+ digital platform, where she is currently contributing editor. - (Penguin Putnam)

Booklist Reviews

At 15, the author, born an albino Filipino, descendant of peasant farmers, immigrated to the U.S., where she was perceived as being white. Academically gifted, she went to Harvard, where she came out, and, some years later, after going to work at MIT, completed her transition to being a transgender woman. This is her coming-of-age story, which moves backward and forward in time, from being the grandchild of a doting grandmother who regards her as beautiful and promises her a better future, to growing up the offspring of woefully neglectful parents; from a childhood crush on her best friend to a life-enriching love with an older man. Her carefully detailed story is notable for its introspection ("I liked being alone with my thoughts") and emotional depth. The account of her earlier life as a man and her decision to become a woman—including reassignment surgery—is psychologically acute, enlightening, and occasionally heartbreaking as her decision to transition spelled the end of her relationship with the man she loved. Fairest is a welcome addition to transgender literature. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

An award-winning journalist tells the story of how she came to terms with a complex identity that forced her to navigate issues of gender, race, and class. In 2017, Philippine-born "Harvard Man" Talusan returned to her alma mater as a woman. She had first arrived there in 1993 as the male "anak araw," an albino her grandmother believed would one day live among other whites in America. A former child star, Talusan learned early on that she could parlay whiteness into a source of money and power. She also learned that her difference was more than skin deep: In sixth grade, she became "hopelessly smitten" with a male friend. The homosexual crushes continued through adolescence along with vague stirrings of a secret desire to be a woman who, like Lea Salonga in Miss Saigon, was "capable of getting a rugged and kind [American] man to fall in love with her." Talusan moved with her parents to California, where she earned a scholarship to Harvard. There, she quickly learned the benefits of using her albinism and indeterminately Asian features to pass for an exotic-looking Caucasian. She came out as gay, but she was unable to reconcile h er desire for womanhood with her life as a gay male. During her final year in college, she developed a sexually explicit one-person show called Dancing Deviant, and she began a relationship with a white, upper-class MIT professor who introduced her to a life of privilege. However, she soon realized that his desire for her ran counter to her own wish to be desired as that "beguiling woman who stared at me from the other side of the mirror whenever I put on makeup." The author examines queer otherness with relentless honesty, and she investigates how accidental whiteness did not automatically lead to the fairest outcomes, either for herself or others. A captivatingly eloquent memoir. Copyright Kirkus 2020 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Reviews

Even for avid readers of memoirs, Talusan's (journalist and founding executive editor of them., Condé Nast's LGBTQ digital platform) debut will stand out from the crowd, not only because of the author's unique experiences, but also because she presents them with a rare, frank vulnerability. In the first part of the book, Talusan explores her childhood in the Philippines, and how her albinism and family dynamics affected her upbringing. Later, she becomes a student at Harvard, navigating a new environment while exploring her sexuality and grappling with the complexities of her racial identity. Lastly, in perhaps the most compelling part of the book, readers follow her journey and relationships after college, which ultimately led to her gender transition. VERDICT Gender, race, and sexuality are all foremost themes throughout the book, and it is a notable read for those particularly interested in these topics. However, Talusan's account also offers an intensely personal example of how one's relation to oneself changes over time, shaped by circumstances and personal choices, making it a compelling story for a wide variety of readers.—Sarah Schroeder, Univ. of Washington Bothell

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Talusan, a founding executive editor of Them, Condé Nast's LGBTQ online magazine, who was born as an albino boy in the Philippines, relays her "journey across gender" in an assured debut memoir with a cinematic flair. Talusan discusses growing up as a blond-haired oddity with "weak eyes" in the Philippines in the 1970s and '80s, and of feeling shame for liking boys. She writes with distance about her "derelict" parents—father was absent, mother was a gambler—who in 1990 brought her to the U.S., where "white people thought I was white" and where it was "to my benefit to seem white too." Talusan attended Harvard, where she came out as gay and began exploring drag and her desire to transition. She addresses her sex life, including going to a bathhouse and hooking up with men through personal ads, and talks heartbreakingly of being in a relationship with someone who loved her as a man but not as a woman. Talusan had gender reassignment surgery in Thailand in 2002, but the narrative jumps over the procedure itself; rather, it's about the process of coming into one's own and of gaining "freedom of expression" through gender transition. This elegant memoir examining whiteness, womanhood, and the shaping of identity will resonate with readers of any community, LGBTQ or not. (May)