Reviews

Below are the reviews I received from the wonderful people who agreed to read the ARC (Advanced Reader Copies) of my memoir.

**Tess Kunik, Co-Founder of The Liv Project and Liv’s Sister**

“My Swan Song for Joy,” is a libretto of love, loss, and sacred sisterhood. Vaughn writes of life with their sister, Joy, and the harmony of their sisterhood with its dissonance of sibling antagonism and its consonance of unwavering and unconditional love. Joy was Vaughn’s “First Best friend,” and their dispositions could not be more different. It’s these differences that make their sisterhood such a bewitching duet – two unique arrangements unwavering in their love that fit together to make perfect harmony.

Vaughn’s love for Joy is palpable and gives us the opportunity to grow to know and love Joy too. When Vaughn shares of Joy’s loss, we feel that loss with them, it hangs in the air like an unresolved chord.

“Joy is still dead…she will, until I die, be my dead sister,” are Vaughn’s closing words of the Epilogue. Like Vaughn, I also have a dead sister. I didn’t know what it meant to be lonely before she died. Grieving a sibling is a lonely reality. We’re called the “forgotten mourners” because our grief is often overlooked. Because our role in the family changes. Because we are the sibling who survived. When you’re caught up in grief it’s hard to remember the life that your sibling lived. I love Vaughn’s memoir because I got to know them and their sister, Joy. While I am blown away by the absolute tragedy of Joy’s death(s), I feel so lucky to have gotten to know about her life. I also feel lucky to have gotten to know J9. They and their story are not forgotten.

In reflecting on this sister memoir, the first thing I think about is not Joy’s death(s), but her life. I think about her helping J9 down the tree at the family reunion, I think about Joy being upset that she didn’t have freckles. I picture her on the glass blowing tour. I see her putting on clown makeup with J9 in their mother’s bathroom. I think about J9 coming out to Joy and how much that meant to them. I think about her life and their life together as sisters. These moments and memories are a gift. This book is a gift, a gift that feels like a hug from my late sister, and I look forward to reading it again and again.

Tom Montgomery Fate, author of The Long Way Home

While reflecting on their childhood, and their sister’s tragic injury and death, J9 Vaughn artfully explores their own struggles to find acceptance in her family as a queer person. Disarmingly honest, there are spirals of both joy and sorrow in their journey toward understanding.

Karen Halvorsen Schreck, author of Broken Ground

Heartfelt, honest, raw, and wise, this genre-defying memoir tells a profoundly moving tale of sibling love and devotion. Employing personal anecdote and compelling, lyrical prose, Vaughn describes the bond they shared, and share, with their beloved sister, Joy, charting the deepening of their relationship throughout the course of childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. This is a love that survives continental crossings, familial upheaval and conflict, great personal challenge and transformation, and, ultimately, devastating loss and grief. My Swan Song for Joy is that rare kind of book that centers on an incredibly unique story that somehow also manages to be entirely relatable.

Joshua ES O’Shea, Librarian

This book is devastating in its beauty. it is honest in depicting tragedy as well as hope; difficulties alongside empowering pride. Not only a memoir, this is a collection of treasures. We can feel Vaughn’s love by seeing their depiction of life through young eyes and the cataloged research material. Any two sisters, any sibling, anyone who has loved another person deeply will be able feel connected to this relationship. Joy lives on in the author’s life and, because of this book, can live in ours as well.

Beth Clower, Librarian

My Swan Song for Joy is deeply personal and emotionally honest. It follows the story of one family through heartache, resilience, and love through the eyes of one sister. Well crafted, it is a story both universal and singular. A thoughtful and searing story.