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Summary and Reviews of This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris

This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris

This Boy We Made

A Memoir of Motherhood, Genetics, and Facing the Unknown

by Taylor Harris
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 4, 2022, 272 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2023, 272 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

A Black mother bumps up against the limits of everything she thought she believed - about science and medicine, about motherhood, and about her faith - in search of the truth about her son.

One morning, Tophs, Taylor Harris's round-cheeked, lively twenty-two-month-old, wakes up listless, only lifting his head to gulp down water. She rushes Tophs to the doctor, ignoring the part of herself, trained by years of therapy for generalized anxiety disorder, that tries to whisper that she's overreacting. But at the hospital, her maternal instincts are confirmed: something is wrong with her boy, and Taylor's life will never be the same.

With every question the doctors answer about Tophs's increasingly troubling symptoms, more arise, and Taylor dives into the search for a diagnosis. She spends countless hours trying to navigate health and education systems that can be hostile to Black mothers and children; at night she googles, prays, and interrogates her every action.

Some days, her sweet, charismatic boy seems just fine; others, he struggles to answer simple questions. A long-awaited appointment with a geneticist ultimately reveals nothing about what's causing Tophs's drops in blood sugar, his processing delays—but it does reveal something unexpected about Taylor's own health. What if her son's challenges have saved her life?

This Boy We Made is a stirring and radiantly written examination of the bond between mother and child, full of hard-won insights about fighting for and finding meaning when nothing goes as expected.

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

This Boy We Made repeatedly surprised me. I'd assumed it would be exclusively about the medical mystery of Tophs' disability. But Harris elegantly weaves in a lot of other themes, too: mental illness, her own physical concerns, racism, faith, and advocating for her children's health and education. She recalls her teenage struggles with anxiety and the search for a medication regime that would help. A stay-at-home mother of three, she worries she's passed down her mental health issues to her older daughter...continued

Full Review (807 words)

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(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).

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Beyond the Book



BRCA Gene Mutations and Prophylactic Mastectomy Surgery

Multicolored visual of a section of a BRCA1 protein In This Boy We Made, author Taylor Harris finds out that she has a BRCA2 genetic mutation that puts her at about a 50% higher than average risk of developing breast cancer, and decides to have a prophylactic double mastectomy.

A mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene is associated with a higher risk of certain types of cancer. Dr. Mary-Claire King's work from the 1970s onwards was responsible for discovering the BRCA1 gene's connection to hereditary breast cancer. In 2014, she was given the Lasker–Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science for this work. Her findings led to the development of genetic testing for breast cancer risk based on BRCA1 and BRCA2, after their locations on chromosomes 13 and 17 were identified. ...

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Read-Alikes

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