Graphic memoir. A self-identified tomboy looking back on the frictions, frustrations, and traumas of gender she experienced growing up. Thoughtful, readable, and interesting. Both an engaging story and a useful entry into thinking about gender – I can imagine, for instance, it being a useful teaching tool with students who had not really thought about the topic before. It did make me think quite a bit, however, about what expectations might be reasonable in this kind of project – where it is a person telling their own story – in terms of accounting for *other* forms of friction with and strategies for navigating gender. It wouldn’t have to be much, I don’t think, but it felt like the author, a straight cisgender tomboy who was regularly misgendered and subjected to lesbophobic slurs, could have done more to engage with the relationship between her experiences and those of some queer women and trans men, not to mention women who engage critically with gender constraints from places that are very femme. Which feels unfair to even suggest – I’m not for a minute saying that she should not be at the centre of her own story, and the fact that it *is* a story rather than any kind of more abstracted engagement with the issues is part of its strength. But, still, it felt like there was some unexpected silence and a missed opportunity for a richer end-product. Still, I liked it, and I hope it finds its way into the hands of lots of kids and that the constraints and frictions of gender might thereby be eased at least a little in their contexts.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.