[guessing at the star rating / mining my old FB notes now that they are almost impossible to find]

a book about a hermaphrodite might have difficulty getting traction if that's all it did, but this well researched novel puts that theme of 'either/or' throughout. whether it's the nature vs nurture debate, or the immigrant experience of choosing where you call home, or a new convert to Islam abandoning their slave name. it's all about identity.

i think, where the author really succeeded, was as the multiple voices of his main character as he/she goes from young girl to teen boy to refined man. there are also many moments of the narrator referring to herself in the third person, a natural reaction to viewing your past with newly-coloured lenses.

the book was full of historical details i found fascinating: the point system real estate agents used to allow or disallow immigrant families into the neighborhoods, the birth Islam in America, the biology behind different type of sexual disorder, the Detroit riots... i never knew about the antagonism between Turks and Greeks before; it's made me curious to read more about the history of their conflict