I'm not arguing that organizing the story around a number of 'dad rock' songs lightens the narrative, but it give readers, especially readers who might not share a lot of experiences with Niko, an entrance point...Even when I didn't know the songs, the writing about them is strong enough that they still work as the entrance point into the narrative. Though obviously the goal is to evoke her life through the songs, she is also able to evoke the songs with her prose, which also speaks to the strength of the collection.-- "Yesterday Today Tomorrow Forever" (4/22/2025 12:00:00 AM)
Music has the power...to reveal truths about yourself before you even recognize them. That's one aspect of culture writer Niko Stratis' debut book, The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman.-- "CBC" (5/6/2025 12:00:00 AM)
Never did I think I would be read so thoroughly by an essay collection featuring all of the sad man music I hold so dear to my heart, or by the simple description of saying a person looks like they're very into Pavement. This collection is tenderhearted and open, written in straightforward yet staggering prose and as someone who came into themselves listening to several of these same acts, I can't help but adore this collection and rush to put it in the hands of everyone I know.-- "The Southern Bookseller Review" (4/24/2025 12:00:00 AM)
Niko is exactly the person whose memoir in songs I would want to read and I'm delighted to tell you that it didn't disappoint; it's a lovingly constructed mixtape about the importance of music within a personal quest to understand who you really are, or what you're meant to be.-- "The Maris Review" (5/6/2025 12:00:00 AM)
Stratis's memoir offers a bold vision for tenderness, healing and hope...[It] will be a balm for anyone who has felt at odds with their circumstances and found a way to survive them through music...The brilliance of this book rests in how it makes space for kids like young Stratis to feel seen...[especially at] a time when we're seeing increasing hostilities towards trans people...The Dad Rock that Made Me a Woman demonstrates how critically engaging with music offers us a path towards understanding each other better by making space for the pop culture that offers a window to our souls. In a political context that can and will erode the soul, this book is a welcome reminder of how music can change your life.-- "The Tyee" (4/28/2025 12:00:00 AM)
Stratis's writing is as lyrical and potent as the songs she writes about...It will bother some that her transition doesn't really appear until late in the book, but as a later-in-life queer myself, I loved getting to read about the complexity that made her who she is, even if it's not a pat narrative. This is the core of Stratis's work: she reflects on the stuff of life that is messy and complicated, and--like our favourite musicians--she makes art of it.-- "Xtra Magazine" (5/5/2025 12:00:00 AM)
What's moving and important here could have been in a work that centers around pretty much any genre, it's just that the reality of Stratis's life means it has to be dad rock. This is a book about how we grow up with, live entwined around, and learn from art, even to the extent that many of us can say that art had some part in saving our lives...Each chapter interweaves discussion on [one] song and its place in the artist's work and career with the events from her own life most relevant to her relationship with the song. Sometimes the emphasis even shifts on a sentence-by-sentence basis in a way that gives both the narrative and the analysis a sense of propulsion...You finish The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman feeling like you know the author, even if her pains and tribulations aren't yours; and if you are also someone who understands your self, world, and relationships through music, you can recognize just how vitally dad rock did those things for her.-- "dusted" (5/7/2025 12:00:00 AM)
[This] beautifully written...[book] artfully combines personal reflection with wider cultural critique. Like much of Stratis' writing, music is the throughline--this time the oft maligned genre of dad rock--to explore themes of gender, queerness, sobriety and belonging. But to me, some of the most interesting parts of this memoir are the reflections on class in Canada, a topic that I don't think Canadian media touches on enough.-- "Friday Things" (4/11/2025 12:00:00 AM)
[This] stirring collection focused on the music that inspired the author to embrace her trans identity...is a poignant ode to musicʼs power to change lives.-- "Publishers Weekly" (5/1/2025 12:00:00 AM)
Stratis effortlessly blends memoir and music history to tell the story of growing up transgender in the Canadian Yukon in the 1980s and '90s, using songs by artists like Wilco, Sheryl Crow, The Wallflowers, and R.E.M. as a mirror for her own feelings during defining moments...She goes on to redefine what the term 'dad rock' means to her, casting off its negative associations and showing how music became a lifeline for her. Fans of books like Laura Jane Grace's Kill Me Loudly will enjoy Stratis' honest reflections on the lifesaving power of music.-- "Booklist" (5/1/2025 12:00:00 AM)
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" (4/1/2025 12:00:00 AM)
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)" (5/1/2025 12:00:00 AM)
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"" (2/5/2025 12:00:00 AM)
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" (1/8/2025 12:00:00 AM)

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
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
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