November 11, 2023
Middlesex is the name of the street where our hero,
Cal, spent their formative teenage years.
It was probably named after Middlesex County in greater London,
the “Middle Saxon Province”, and was a street that become a refuge for
Detroit’s Anglo-Saxon population fleeing a browning inner city.
Middlesex is also an obvious reference to Cal’s intersex
physiology, the biological fact that propels much of the story in this
multigenerational history of a genetic anomaly.
The multiple duties performed by this one word is emblematic of
Jeffrey Eugenides’ style and his crafting of a tightly woven, highly
entertaining history of three generations of the Stephanides clan.
But this book is much more than a family saga, even
if it is a good one. The
intersection of our characters with important historical events (wars
between Turkey and Greece, prohibition, the founding of the Nation of
Islam, race riots in Detroit, the rise and fall of a great industrial
city) provide fascinating digressions that enliven and enlighten our
main story line. Eugenides
seems to have done his research.
When I looked up some history of the early years of the Nation
of Islam, what I found tracked Eugenides’ telling almost exactly,
except of course the secret identity of the enigmatic founder, Wallace
Fard Muhammad.
Then there is the unique telling of a family
history, and its secrets, from the perspective of genetics.
Again Eugenides educates us as we see a fuller view of the
complexities of biological sex than we generally encounter in a novel.
We read about brother-sister incest for the third month in a
row. Oh boy.
Finally, the most important theme of the book, at
least in my mind, is personal identity.
Who decides how you identify yourself?
When you are born it is your parents that provide your
identity. But over time
political and cultural forces weigh in, as the powerful try to force
identities on the marginalized:
are you a Greek or a Turk or an American, are you white enough
or black enough, a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew, a boy or a girl, do
you belong here? At the
age of 14 Cal grows up and takes the power of identity away from his
parents, away from medical and scientific authority, away from
cultural expectations, and declares “I am a boy”.
All of us went through such transition, though less
dramatically for most of us, as we took over our own personal identity
as our own personal responsibility.
Each of us every day struggles, consciously or not, to keep our
behavior true to our internal conception of who we are, recreating our
identity continuously. We
also struggle to prevent others from forcing an identity upon us.
Published 21 years ago, this book seems to be
speaking directly to our moment in history.
Today’s generation, in 2023, has challenged, and for the most
part rejected, the notions of gender that just two or three
generations ago were so embedded in our cultural norms as to be all
but unspoken. As Cal’s
mermaid friend Zora said, “Sex is biological.
Gender is cultural.”
But to a prior generation, like Cal’s parents, sex and gender
were synonymous. As the
parent of a Trans child, I have watched up close as kids today
navigate new notions of gender, and new pronouns, with ease.
I have also seen them amazed and annoyed at how uncomprehending
and stubborn many of my age group can be.
Both of my kids have changed their names, changed their
pronouns, and adopted genders that I didn’t know existed when I was
their age. I am happy for
them, to witness young minds that are open and free, even as I
struggle to follow their lead.
For all these reasons
Middlesex was a great
read, but there is another more compelling reason I liked the book:
it was fun! Full of
humor, and hope, and joy, Eugenides’ style kept me smiling nearly
every minute. Even when
the dark moments, the injustice, inhumanity, murder and death, were
brought to the front of the story, they blended into the lives of
their witnesses rather than consuming those lives.
Hope and joy lived on, through all those hardships.
That is how I want to live my life.
Chris Mack is a writer in Austin, Texas.
Copyright 2023, Chris Mack.
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