Audiobook review of Diary of a Misfit by Casey Parks

All hell broke unfastened when Casey Parks got here out to her household. But amid all their weeping and wailing and gnashing of tooth, there was a shiny spark that got here to dominate Parks’ private {and professional} life for over a decade, which she recounts in Diary of a Misfit (14.5 hours). Parks’ stern, conservative grandmother took her apart and informed her a secret: “I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man.” Parks’ seek for this particular person despatched her again to her childhood houses in Louisiana and Mississippi, and her investigation turns into entwined along with her personal story of rising up homosexual within the Deep South.

Parks has been deeply wounded by her household and her church, and as each writer and narrator, she tells her story at some take away, as if she’s faithfully recounting it to a buddy or therapist whereas attempting to not relive her ache. Ironically, her restraint makes the scars she bears extra evident—but it surely additionally makes her reconciliation along with her previous extra triumphant.