Public Perception and Identity

Quote

Amazon.com

Out of all the extended family, only Amy’s mother knew the truth about me. To everyone else, I passed fine. It never came up any more. After years of hormones, surgery, I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had questioned who I was. Amy used to hate it, not being able to qualify this is my boyfriend with he’s trans, especially with her queer friends, so she wouldn’t seem like an ordinary straight girl. Amy was a little concerned sometimes that she was too conventional. I didn’t really get it — I liked to blend, plus I thought she was like a fucking star in every room she walked into. But it was my life, and she got that.

I guess I felt a similar way with friends who liked to introduce me with This is Josh. He’s a paramedic. I had to tell people to stop doing it; it was my card to play. Because inevitably, you immediately got, Wow, what’s your craziest story? I could never do that! But I doubt they really wanted to hear about the woman who jumped off her building last night, especially when all of us were sitting at the bar having a good time. But I got it. It was a weird job. I just didn’t like to immediately be questioned about it.

Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall

This novel won the Lambda Literary Award: Transgender. A review can be seen HERE. More award winners can be found on the Amazon.com  Lambda Literary Award: Transgender listing.

 

Orphaned Misfit Holiday

Quote

Amazon.com

Back at the apartment, Roxy was hanging up our stockings and making invitations to our annual Christmas Eve dinner party for friends who don’t visit family for the holidays. She’d rented a deep fryer and Guitar Hero, and had a Charlie Brown tree in every room. The holiday season fuelled Roxy, filled her with kindness for all the local orphaned twenty-something misfits. I just wished the holiday was over. In January, I can start over, I thought, along with everyone else.

Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall

This novel won the Lambda Literary Award: Transgender. A review can be seen HERE. More award winners can be found on the Amazon.com  Lambda Literary Award: Transgender listing.

Moral Compass

Quote

Amazon.com

Maria grounded me in my history and my present. Have you ever met someone who was just good? Who, when you came across complicated moral questions, was programmed into your phone as “certain virtue”? This was Maria, exactly.

Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall

This novel won the Lambda Literary Award: Transgender. A review can be seen HERE. More award winners can be found on the Amazon.com  Lambda Literary Award: Transgender listing.

A Well-Earned Fist to the Face

Quote

Amazon.com

Let me tell you, most guys who get punched in the face deserve it. I would say maybe eighty percent of them fully deserve what’s coming to them. Maybe the other ten percent could’ve used a good tongue lashing instead. This guy was one of those people I wished I could’ve taken out myself. Every second word out of his mouth was faggot and he’d uttered a variety of rotating racial slurs. He smelled like a decomposing liver.

Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall

This novel won the Lambda Literary Award: Transgender. A review can be seen HERE. More award winners can be found on the Amazon.com  Lambda Literary Award: Transgender listing.

Expectation and Criminal Activity

Quote

Amazon.com

Today I checked the lock on the pink BMX, and felt a wave of guilt for even contemplating stealing it. It was my day off. I had planned for the sweet, calming tedium of grocery shopping, perhaps a magazine read cover to cover while sipping a fourth cup of coffee, no random crimes. But there was something in the air: expectation.

Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall

This novel won the Lambda Literary Award: Transgender. A review can be seen HERE. More award winners can be found on the Amazon.com  Lambda Literary Award: Transgender listing.

Well Matched Roommates

Quote

Amazon.com

Despite Roxy’s stripper name — the actual name on her birth certificate was Roxy Barbara Streisand Gillard, and I’m not even kidding — she was as far as possible from the way you’d expect a Roxy to look. Roxy was a connector — or was it a nucleus? At school I had always skipped biology, so I wasn’t good with scientific metaphors. Anyway, she connected people. She was pretty much how I made all my friends in Toronto. She made an effort to make plans with friends, and to introduce them to others, like a community hub. There — Roxy was a community hub. She was rarely alone. She was always up to something interesting.

Roxy liked to talk. I liked to listen. The roommate situation would probably work out well.

Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall

This novel won the Lambda Literary Award: Transgender. A review can be seen HERE. More award winners can be found on the Amazon.com  Lambda Literary Award: Transgender listing.

Coffee and Memories of Youth

Quote

Amazon.com

The stale coffee is boiling up but he catches it before it goes over the side, pours it into a stained cup and blows on the black liquid, lets a panel of the dream slide forward. If he does not force his attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong.

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

Families Are Special

Quote

Amazon.com

Each family is special. The most important thing about a family is that all the people in it love each other.

Heather Has Two Mommies, written by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Laura Cornell

Parenting Is An Action

Quote

Amazon.com

“Who’s your mom when you set you campsite? Who’s your mom for scary faces with flashlights? Mommy helps to set up the campsite. Momma makes great scary faces with a flashlight.”

A Tale of Two Mommies, written by Vanita Oelschlager and illustrated by Mike Blanc

Can’t Fix It, Got To Stand It

Quote

Amazon.com

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it.

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx