And the Dragons Do Come
Raising a Transgender Kid in Rural America
Sim Butler’s incisive memoir And the Dragons Do Come is about raising a transgender child in the Deep South.
Butler assumed that his firstborn child was a boy. But after years of her fervent insistence that she was a girl, coupled with behavioral issues and early signs of self-harm, he learned to embrace her transgender identity. Together, the Butler family navigated discrimination from educators and coaches and found community in their progressive church. When the state of Alabama proposed a bill to ban gender-affirming healthcare for minors, they joined a legal battle that resulted in the family moving across state lines.
Butler draws upon his professional experience as a scholar and balances passionate parenting reflections with academic research and logic-based arguments. The book cites studies, including a 2021 article that found transgender people face increased rates of assault and homicide. In advocating for trans rights, the book pulls from both conservative and liberal ideology to appeal to a variety of political viewpoints.
The prose is marked by anxious candor about Butler’s parenting decisions, including how to refer to his child on the page. After much debate, he chose a pseudonym. Indeed, the prose carries an undercurrent of unease, including around Butler grappling with the legacy of his sheriff grandfather, considering his own privilege, and worrying about whether his daughter’s gender identity is “just a phase.” There are long interludes about the family’s church’s annual beach retreat and Butler’s ninth-grade birthday party, but these detours reveal Butler’s instinct to tie personal memory to contemporary transgender debates. An extended detour into Butler’s graduate school intramural soccer team segues into a discussion of mixed-gender sports, for example.
And the Dragons Do Come is a passionate memoir about fatherhood in the face of transphobic legislation.
Reviewed by
Hannah Pearson
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
