The Natural Mother of the Child by Krys Malcolm Belc

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.

Belc's memoir of nonbinary parenthood is a pleasure to read from start to finish. He grapples with what gender means in the context of personal development, relationships, pregnancy, being an embodied human generally, and parenting. Actually, grappling is the wrong word. More like, thoughtfully contends with all those areas of intersection and more, while creating a memoir that also reads like a love letter to his wife and their children. The inclusion of family photos and archival bureaucratic paperwork highlighting the discrepancy between parenting as it really occurs and societal ideas about “natural mothers” feels effortless, not forced. I'm just grateful he shared this story with the world.

A powerful memoir about parenting, dealing with the effects of your childhood as an adult, transitioning and the struggles of LGBTQ+ parents.

Krys's incredible honesty about all of these topics was very relatable. I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by the author. It's always hit or miss as to whether I will enjoy an author reading their own book, but in this case, I felt like I was reading Krys's journal and it was nice to hear their voice telling me the story.

I do think I would recommend a physical copy of this book over the audio simply because of the writing style. It switches back and forth from first person narrative to speaking to someone else as if in a letter/reflection regularly and I found it a bit jarring every time it happened and scrambling to figure out who was being spoken about. There are also some legal documents near the end that would have been easier to absorb the contents of if I were viewing it rather than listening.

***Thank you to Dreamscape Media for providing me with a copy of the audiobook for free via NetGalley for an unbiased review.