The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman

Niko Stratis is an award-winning writer from Toronto by way of the Yukon, where she spent years working as a journeyman glazier before coming out as trans in her thirties and being forced to abandon her previous line of work. Her writing has appeared in publications like Catapult, Spin, Paste and more. She's a Cancer, and a former smoker.

Far away from dry land, and its bitter memories Bitter melodies, turning your orbit around The whole world will be listening now Got to be something better than in the middle Why the hell are you so sad? If I could be who you wanted, all the time See you in heaven if you make the list He might be a father but he sure ain't a dad Last night I dreamt I'd forgotten my name Take my hand and help me not to shake Play with matches if you think you need to play with matches I can't think of floorboards anymore I'm ready for both of us now Want to change my clothes, my hair, my face Pick up the pieces and go home It's the mercy I can't take We're all supposed to try I wanna see it when you find out what comets, stars, and moons are all about I never thought about love when I thought about home If the dead just go on living, well there's nothing left to fear

"Songs can build rooms for us to collapse into when there's nowhere else to go, and songs can bore openings into new universes where we can finally bloom. The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman is a piercing memoir of trans adolescence and young womanhood amid rural Canada's beauty and desolation, and a riveting study of the ways in which music can both tie generations together and cocoon us through difficult becomings. Niko Stratis's expansive, emotive storytelling draws fresh electricity from songs that may well already hold a place in your (or your dad's) personal pantheon. What a joy it is to hear them anew through her ears. If you've ever felt a song look right through you before you could see yourself, this book is for you." - Sasha Geffen, author of Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary "A book that sits beautifully with the bloodiness and bones of a working-class trans life. A wonderfully queer love letter to artists and musicians and all those who have had to bare their souls just to carve out a life in a world that has no place for them. A lesson on how to write yourself alive." - Carvell Wallace, bestselling author of Another Word for Love: A Memoir "The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman is a book sturdy as a brick house and tender as Wilco's "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart," which is to say that Niko Stratis has written herself-and us all-a place in which to freely and truly live. " - Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch "Niko Stratis's scintillating personal essay collection...[is a] confessional, clear-eyed book [that] blends cerebral music criticism with candid memoir elements...The book is a heartfelt tribute to the tenderness of dad rock and caring fathers, intertwining high-minded rock criticism with personal stories...A transcendent personal essay collection...[this book] crescendo[s] to sonorous heights." Foreword Reviews (Starred) "Many people could produce essays on the songs in their lives that saved them, but Stratis's well-practiced skill at writing on music, memory, and emotion gives this memoir a piercing and poetic quality that will move most readers." (Library Journal) "It's helpful to have a trans culture upon which to draw, but many of us had to figure ourselves out with whatever culture was at hand. That's the premise of The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman. It's great that there are so many trans books coming out, but to nobody's surprise its trans women who came from money and/or had a formal education who mostly get to write them. Transition can kick a transsexual out of the nest in the tree of class privileges, but it still helps to have been there before plunging earthward. Like her father, Stratis worked in glass factories and other manual trades, and found the thread of a life through music...I'm not particularly fond of 'dad rock,' but Stratis shows us how so many of these songs, mostly by men, have an emotional openness and expansiveness that's not so common in pop music anymore." e-flux "Stratis contemplates gender, sense of self, and transitions of many kinds alongside the music that shaped her...With chapters centered around classic and unexpected 'dad rock' from Radiohead and R.E.M. to Sheryl Crow and Waxahatchee, [this book is] a moving reflection on how music can help us find our truest selves." BookRiot's "Our Queerest Shelves"