The Book That Almost Broke My Blog

Trans, Juliet Jacques

I've been avoiding this post for months. I even read an entire series since this one, but I want to chronicle my reading in order. So, it's time. This isn't going to be easy.

I mentioned previously that I am trying to read more first-person narratives. And my desire for an authentic storyteller is hipster level. Enter, Ms. Jacques.

To begin, I'm going to share a little of my experiences with trans people. I went to a state school that had a surprisingly large group celebrating and supporting the LGBTQ+ community. Sort of. Those four years I was around people who explored, questioned, and experimented with their identities in many ways. It was at a drag pageant on campus that I learned an acquaintance from high school was performing. My favorite nightclub had drag shows. The restrooms might have had gender signs, but nobody paid attention to them. Honestly, it was one of the few places where I felt like I could just be me, safely, and nobody cared what that meant.

My senior year I moved into a small apartment complex that shared a parking lot with another. The two buildings faced each other. Naturally, many of us became friends. It was an eclectic group of people. It was home. Among the maybe 3 dozen people living in those two buildings, were David and Shel. David was David most of the time, except when he was Kenya- a crowd pleasing queen. It was easy to know which persona was present. Kenya was a character David became. Shel was different. Shel was born male and tried to live as a woman sometimes. It was a painful struggle for him (his chosen pronoun). He had tried hormone therapy in the past but didn't continue it. He hated being a man and was terrified of being a woman. Today he might call himself genderfluid, a term we didn't have back then. The point is, these were people I saw daily. They were friends. They were my most intimate experience with trans identities. I took that for granted.

Now to the book. Jacques has admitted that she didn't want to publish a memoir, a fact that is pretty obvious to me. It's a shame that the only story a publisher wanted to touch was this one because it is not well-written. To be clear, my problems with the story aren't with the overall content. It reads exactly like a book the writer never wanted to pen.

For a memoir, Jacques shares very little of her interior life. There's occasional discussion of depression or the anxious feelings she had when shopping. But mostly it's almost a third person limited narration of events of her life. There are detailed paragraphs about soccer/football plays and many references to the music scene she was into. Both were completely lost on me and did nothing to help me relate to the person behind the story. I can't blame Jacques for this, since she didn't want to write a memoir. But at the same time, I wonder why she bothered with publishing it.

The other thing I didn't care for was the complaining about how hard it was to transition. Remember, I had a friend who was never able to, even though he wanted to. Knowing how difficult and expensive it is for people here, having to live as a woman for a year before having confirmation surgery seems like a pretty privileged complaint to me. It's not a competition, of course, but if that's the hardest thing you have to overcome ...

There are things I really liked about the book, too. Just not the memoir part. Jacques weaves in a little trans theory and politics. She talks about how limited trans lit is- the same thing her own book suffers from. She gives very limited space to her life before transition, which I have deep respect for. If people want to get off on that kind of stuff, they can read Middlesex. I liked that she didn't write a sensational story, that there was no huge battle with her parents or a suicide attempt.

It's hard to give this one a rating. My feelings about it are too mixed up. Most notably is that, as a cis-woman, it's not really my place to rate Ms. Jacques' experience. The obscure scene references and distant storytelling are not good writing, in my opinion. At the same time, I realize that she didn't have many options. I'm glad I read the book, but I'm not sure I'm glad she wrote it.

Americanah

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I could probably take a few days to write this review. I could turn it into a full-on book report cum sociology conversation. But that's not what you are here for, so I'll curb those desires. A little.

This one took me a while to get into. I don't know if it was life circumstances or what, but I almost didn't renew after two weeks. I almost didn't finish this book. But I picked this book as a conscious effort to read more books by people of color, especially women. So, I kind of had to finish it. And, once I hit a certain point, one I can't really define, I didn't want to stop reading. Full confession, with just 20-ish pages left, I put my tablet on my bedside table and spent a sleepless night worrying that one of the characters might die. You might say I am invested in my stories.

Americanah is the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman who moves to the United States, goes through some stuff, writes a blog and then ... well, I try not to give spoilers here. But the tale isn't that straightforward. It's a love story- chapters devoted to Ifem's boyfriend, Obinze, and the path his life takes. These two are school sweethearts who flit around each other like bugs around a lightbulb. They have very different experiences with immigration, but Adichie maintains a parallel storyline.

My freshman year at Indiana University, I took L141 like all my peers. The topic for this lit class was The Immigrant Experience. It wasn't my favorite class or topic. But now, years later, I wish I could track down that professor and talk about this book with her. There were things that I learned in that class that changed the way I read this book. I found myself mentally putting on Ifemelu's shoes to understand her story, not my interpretation of it. It was really quite interesting. I realized how many little things I take for granted daily that are unusual and even frightening to immigrants.

Another interesting thing about this book is that Ifem, as a Non-American Black, has a freedom to say things that American Blacks want to say (and do say) without being accused of reverse-racism or "playing the race card." It's almost as if she is this dispassionate outside observer, and so she can criticize Americans because she is detached. I highlighted many passages- a white woman who always refers to black women as beautiful but never as black, the "aggressive, unaffectionate interest" another woman has with Nigerians, accents, hair, tribalisms, the nationalism of liberal Americans, race as a social not biological construct, privilege, and Oprah. I would love to talk about each of these in depth, but I'll have to save that for face-to-face interactions.

I was a little disappointed when I looked up the Raceteenth blog and only found a couple of entries. This would have been a fantastic crossmojination(TM) of literature and the real world. But it doesn't seem that anyone working on the book was interested in that. Oh well.

I can't think of any reason not to recommend this book. It's love and travel and pop culture. It characters I truly care for. I don't own it, but will look for it in the used bookstore. Americanah earns 4 Marias.

Room

Room, Emma Donoghue

I started this one, put it down, came back to it. The concept is fascinating and I really wanted to love it. But I had to get through the first section before I could.

In an interview at the back of the book, Donoghue says that people will love the first part or the last part. Boy, she wasn't kidding! I liked the story of the first part- while Jack and Ma are still in captivity- but the storytelling made me want to do violent things to my copy (which, I promise I would never do).

The whole book is told by Jack, a five-year-old boy born and raised in a single room. His mother was kidnapped at 19. All he knows is Room. He gives titles to the objects in his room, much like the language of A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh series. And I love that! I have written a few essays about "proper verbs" and how this incorrect grammar actually represents ideas about language that children have but don't have words for. So that part was good and gave me hope for the rest of it. But it soon became difficult to believe Jack.

Given the headlines about children born in captivity- Jaycee Dugard (who was found after Room was written) or Elisabeth Fritzl- Jack's perspective is sadly believable. But what he knows and doesn't know is so unbelievable that I hated the first half of the book. He watches tv and listens to the radio, but doesn't know there is anything outside of Room. He watches cooking shows, but says Ma "hottens" food. At age five, he knows how to read and multiply but says if he touches the stove the red would spread to his clothes- even though he knows the word fire. It's this bizarre inconsistency that made the first half difficult to get into.

Then the break comes. Ma, who remembers Outside but has spent five years teaching Jack that there is only Room, wants out. She has to undo all the lies she has told and put her baby in the most extreme danger. Here's where it gets better.

After a milder escape and rescue than one might imagine, Ma and Jack move out of Room and into a psychiatric clinic. Ma is relieved to be out of captivity; Jack wants to return to the only world he's ever known. Together, they have to navigate a new life. The second half if painful and joyful, endearing and heart-wrenching. And makes the whole novel readable.

I don't know how they are making a movie with so much exposition from a five-year-old, but I hope the film version manages to be as realistic as the book and doesn't sensationalize an already outrageous story.

Room gets off to a rough start, but earns 3 Marias overall.

Chapter 38: A Book with a One Word Title

Baggage, S.G. Redling

Another Kindle Unlimited title that I snagged to cross off an item on the list. I did not have high hopes for this book. The first 30-40% of it, I was sure the whole thing was going to be awful. Besides the single word title, I picked it because it reminded me of slam dancing with my sister at The Metro to this. So, I was surprised when the story (finally) caught my interest.

Anna Shuler Ray has had terrible things happen to people around her on February 17. Really, really terrible things. To two people, so it seems more like a coincidence than some sort of lifelong pattern. So while she is drinking herself into a stupor in an admittedly poor attempt to cope with the anniversary, someone on her campus is murdered. In the building where she works. Oh, and the guy is interested in her.

Cousin Jeannie is in town, as some sort of enabling support. I mean, sure, sometimes cranking up your favorite childhood pop hits, devouring junk food, and chugging bottles of wine SEEMS like a great idea. But, really? Is this helping someone you love? Someone you consider your sister? This falls firmly on my list of Bad Ideas.

So, ambitionless alcoholic narrator is similar to Girl on the Train, but unlike Rachel, Anna has zero interest in getting involved in another crime. She tries so hard to avoid any connection that she draws attention to herself. As the story progresses, the story arc I expected to unfold doesn't. Well, not exactly. I was right about the villain and the motive, but how we get to that point was not what I thought.

Even with a rough start, Anna's tale became more engrossing. The flashback chapters were clear and crucial to understanding how Anna has become some miserable. I found myself liking her more, in part because the third person flashbacks give her some tenderness and vulnerability that the first person narrative full of self-deprecating remarks dragged the beginning. By about halfway through, I wanted to read more- not so much for the revelation of The Big Secret, which was no surprise- but to see what kind of road Anna might move along next.

One of my favorite scenes is in the police station, when an officer has confronted Anna with a particularly painful piece of evidence that ties her to the campus murder(s). The rest of Anna's lines are simply "fuck you." Over and over. And it was great because I felt that complete loss of any reasonable response and her need to just stand her ground with her "phrase du jour." It was comedic, dramatic, and realistic. I loved it.

My biggest disappointment with the novel is that there is mention of a crime from the past that earned a name. You know the type- BTK, Westside Strangler, Columbine. Sensational murders that could be concentrated into a few little words that are universally recognized for their horror. So, after reading the book, I googled the name of the crime from Anna's past. No wikipedia entry. Nothing. And I just feel like making a couple of true crime-style webpages would be a great publicity for the book and just add an element to the overall style. I know this is a fictional crime, but having that to read after would have probably earned an extra half Maria.

Still, I enjoyed the book once it really got rolling and found myself interested in a pretty flat character. So Baggage earns 3.5 Marias for being surprisingly satisfying.