Shelving: Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Kathleen Winter's Annabel  has been in my queue for over a year, and I've finally gotten around to reading it. 

Comparison's to Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex are expected, as there is little mainstream fiction written from the point-of-view of an intersex character. Winter's book is artfully written -- it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction -- and evocative. Wayne Blake is born in in 1960s in a small Canadian village to fairly traditional parents. He is intersex, though determined to be a boy by a doctor, and raised as such, until he becomes an adolescent and stops taking the hormones that give him a more male appearance.  I like the parallels between the small town and its rigid gender roles, and a character who is both male and female. However, I find the same things problematic. (Middlesex suffered from the same problem.)

Actually, I find writing even a short review hard because I'm certain I'm doing something wrong, or showing my own privilege, but that's a very real risk when writing about marginalized groups. I really liked this book, but I couldn't help but look for problems.

One of my favorite books about gender identity, Felicia Luna Lemus's Like Son , features a trans character, but the conflict doesn't necessarily center around his gender identity. I use her book as a model for my own writing, and when talking about someone else's. It's a fine line to walk -- not wanting to fall into certain tropes or stereotypes, but also not denying that things like bigotry and violence happen. (Wayne is attacked, and presumably raped, something all too common among non-binary people.) I'd still wholeheartedly recommend it, because it's so gorgeously written.