tonypawela

I have mixed feelings about this book. What I liked: the world desperately needs more books for and about trans teenagers, especially trans men since their struggles are not as well-known and are often hidden behind incorrect beliefs about feminism, lesbianism, and tomboyism. I liked that some of what the title character, J, went through was very authentic--especially with regards to romantic relationships. (Many trans people have a very hard time imagining themselves in romantic or sexual relationships because their bodies don't match what they associate with their gender, forcing them to be "the girlfriend" or "the boyfriend" when they don't think of themselves that way.) I liked that J had unrealistic expectations about how easy it would be to transition, and that he was kind of stupid and ill-informed in some ways but was driven by so much passion for the life he knew he needed to have. I liked that the parents didn't understand--that they saw it more as "she wants to be a boy" rather than "he has always been a boy and wants a body to match." I thought it was interesting that J's best friend Melissa tried to portray his being transgender as "emerging from a cocoon" in a dance and he had to explain (with some frustration) that she wasn't accurately capturing his experience if she thought of it as changing from one thing to another. And I appreciated that J wasn't always consistent, sometimes had doubts, and couldn't see his own specialness sometimes. What I didn't like: J's voice felt a little hollow sometimes in my opinion--there was a sort of disconnect, like Beam was saying all the right things but I wasn't convinced that there was a real person in there feeling them. It sometimes read more like an essay, just a tumble of "stuff trans guy is feeling," than organically felt experiences. Sometimes the concept of someone feeling this way was enough to bring out the emotion, but sometimes it wasn't because I didn't see it really coming from him. I also thought the writing in the first half was incredibly awkward at times, especially when a description of J's physical features was wedged in--a lengthy one, too--and a bunch of patchy flashbacks attempted to make J's past coalesce for us. Readers shouldn't notice that they're being fed exposition, and I kept noticing.

2022-10-10 11:15