PRIDE MONTH 2024! We have covered many graphic memoir accounts of trans lived experiences over the years here at Broken Frontier but in the pages of Élodie Durand’s Transitions: A Mother’s Journey we gain a different perspective; that of a parent coming to terms with the revelation she has a trans child. A book that blends fiction with a real account, Transitions is the story of university researcher Anne Marbot who discovers that the offspring she believed was a young woman named Lucie is actually a trans man named Alex. It follows her as she embarks on her own parallel journey of understanding, self-discovery and acceptance.
Raw and powerfully honest from the very start, Transitions uses a careful mix of minimalist realism, unflinchingly candid dialogue and abstract symbolism to communicate its characters’ emotions and interactions. In an early scene when Alex reveals his gender status to his mother, for example, the sequential pacing is interspersed with entirely black panels to denote Ann’s disbelief, while Alex’s presence begins to slip off the panel to denote his own discomfort at her reaction. “The news of this gender change hit me like a tidal wave, sweeping away all my certainties,” Anne says as she struggles to accept the news.
As time progresses Anne initially finds it difficult to reconcile Alex with the child she had brought up. “I thought I was open-minded” she confesses to her partner Mat in one poignant sequence as she fears for Alex in a transphobic world while simultaneously considering whether she herself is showing her own subconscious prejudice in her reactions. Colour is used with a considered application to not just evoke emotional responses in the readership but also sometimes to almost provoke them. Anne looking at the vibrant colours of the family photo album to denote her inability to accept Alex’s coming out as trans or a recurring use of red as an overwhelming signifier of a kind of grief or anger.
Intermittent breaks from the main narrative consider the subject from a number of different vantage points – scientific summaries, the sociological realities of gender as a social construct, the trans experience as portrayed in the arts, and trans people in history all feature. It adds wider context to the story as the chasm between Anne and Alex continues to widen.
Transitions, though, is a very human account of understanding and rising above our own failings and weaknesses, and Anne’s voyage of discovery is as much about accepting her own limitations, growing and changing as it is about her fractured relationship with her child. It’s crucially important too to stress that while the focus is placed on Anne for most of the book a vitally important later segment flips the perspective, allowing us to see how devastating some of these events were for Alex.
Absolutely replete with storytelling techniques that could only be used to convey ideas and themes as comics, Transitions: A Mother’s Journey is not an easy read. But it is a hopeful and, ultimately, a positive one.
Élodie Durand (W/A), Evan McGorray (T) • Top Shelf Productions, $19.99
Review by Andy Oliver
