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Jul. 28th, 2009 03:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
algOh, livejournal, livejournal.
Unfortunately, I am not qualified for this photograph/essay contest from Purina because I am a professional writer, but I bet some of you are qualified! I was super excited about writing an essay about adopting Theodore and maybe winning $5000... and then I read the rules. But surely some of you have awesome stories about adopting cats that you want to share. Be sure to read the rules before you get too excited!
The other day I took my sister to see her surgeon so he could examine her shoulder and give her instructions for physical therapy and stuff. The good news is that she is doing perfect, and has started using her shoulder normally, and life continues apace. The bad news is that we had to wait for 90 minutes! I spent the time productively, reading Luna by Julie Anne Peters
.
I think this is a deeply flawed book. It is a pretty short novel, written from the point of view of a teenage girl whose older sister is transgender MTF. Only the girl knows. The parents are, as all parents in "issues" novels must be, complete moron idiots. The school the kids attend is full of jerk jocks. This is problematic, because these characters are all so one-note, one-dimensional, and flat, that they're difficult to take seriously.
The transgender character (Luna) is selfish, self-absorbed, and impossible to empathize with. No, I'm not transgender, but I can absolutely empathize with feeling out of place in one's own body, wanting a different body/face, feeling left out of the whole world because of gender/sex/anything.
Written differently, this book could have easily been a book to draw people in to the way it feels to be transgender, the troubles transgender teens (and adults!) have in their lives. The way a transgender person who's dressing to pass has so many hurdles to get over -- to just walk out of the house dressing to pass is huge, not to mention the way people are treated out in the world, in the mall, by police, trying to use the bathroom, trying to buy a cup of coffee.
Unfortunately, because the novel is told from the point of view of the resentful younger sister, the reader doesn't get to experience those things with Luna. Instead, the reader experiences those things with the sister, who is humiliated on Luna's behalf, and hates Luna for being different and weird and making the sister's life difficult.
Ultimately, though, my biggest problem was the lack of the Internet. Seriously. The book was published in 2003, so I'd imagine it was written some time in the late 90s and never updated. This was a huge problem for me that I could not get over to enjoy the rest of the book (what parts of it I would have been able to enjoy, anyway). Luna makes pocket money by building computers for schoolmates, and knows a successful MTF transgender person who lives in Seattle via the Internet, but Luna doesn't belong to any transgender support e-mail groups or LiveJournal communities or bulletin boards. Neither Luna nor her sister bother to look up transgender support groups in their area. Luna never goes to a psychologist, not even after an almost-successful suicide attempt.
I just didn't buy it. I also had some issues with the ridiculous ending.
However. Some of the small details were really excellent, like the way Luna watched her mother and sister all the time to pick up details on how to act more like a girl. A lot of the transgender stuff was taken right from "Transgender Stereotypes 101" (Luna's obsession with hair, makeup, and sweater sets, for example), but it still worked in the context of the characters and the story. For someone's "My First Novel About A Transgender Person" this would probably work -- like, maybe for a 13 year old?
I also picked up Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin
. Basically it's about a cisgendered female teenagers who changes into a cisgendered male teenager for four days every month, and finds it so traumatizing that she teaches herself how to hypnotize herself in order to forget the experience.
Well, I'd like to hypnotize myself into forgetting my experience of reading the book, and I only got about 20 pages in. I am not interested in reading books about girls who are obsessed with fashion, beauty, dieting/being skinny, and getting dates to the prom ever, even if they do change into boys for four days every month. Reviews called this book "fresh" and "edgy" and "witty" but I saw none of that on the pages. I might decide to slog through it some time if I am particularly bored some day, but not until I am really desperate. I wasn't interested in hanging out with those girls when I was in high school; I am definitely not interested in reading books about them now that high school is more than a decade behind me.
...Blah blah blah. In other news, less cranky-making news, I got an invite to Google Voice. So now I have a Google Voice phone number. I just... am not sure what to do with it. I've had the same cell phone number since I got a cell phone back whenever that was (2003?), and I don't even use that most of the time. It's pretty helpful when I want to Twitter about gas prices in the middle of Iowa or text message my sister to remind her to get extra olives on my sandwich or... I don't know. Every once in a while I actually make a phone call and talk on the telephone, but that is pretty rare. Mostly I use my phone to call my sister on the second floor when I am on the first floor and want her to come downstairs or tell me what she wants for supper from the Chinese place. Oh, and the other day I called my mom to tell her to pick us up at the Italian bakery instead of the surgeon's office, because I'd had a hankering for bread and vodka sauce and pignioli cookies.
So... what do I do with yet another phone number??
P.S., guys, if you're ever in Brooklyn and find yourself in dire need of vegetarian vodka sauce or delicious Italian cookies or a cup of strong coffee and a scoop of gelato or spumoni, I recommend Michael's! You'll also be about five minutes away from my house, so stop by and play with the cats!
Unfortunately, I am not qualified for this photograph/essay contest from Purina because I am a professional writer, but I bet some of you are qualified! I was super excited about writing an essay about adopting Theodore and maybe winning $5000... and then I read the rules. But surely some of you have awesome stories about adopting cats that you want to share. Be sure to read the rules before you get too excited!
The other day I took my sister to see her surgeon so he could examine her shoulder and give her instructions for physical therapy and stuff. The good news is that she is doing perfect, and has started using her shoulder normally, and life continues apace. The bad news is that we had to wait for 90 minutes! I spent the time productively, reading Luna by Julie Anne Peters
.I think this is a deeply flawed book. It is a pretty short novel, written from the point of view of a teenage girl whose older sister is transgender MTF. Only the girl knows. The parents are, as all parents in "issues" novels must be, complete moron idiots. The school the kids attend is full of jerk jocks. This is problematic, because these characters are all so one-note, one-dimensional, and flat, that they're difficult to take seriously.
The transgender character (Luna) is selfish, self-absorbed, and impossible to empathize with. No, I'm not transgender, but I can absolutely empathize with feeling out of place in one's own body, wanting a different body/face, feeling left out of the whole world because of gender/sex/anything.
Written differently, this book could have easily been a book to draw people in to the way it feels to be transgender, the troubles transgender teens (and adults!) have in their lives. The way a transgender person who's dressing to pass has so many hurdles to get over -- to just walk out of the house dressing to pass is huge, not to mention the way people are treated out in the world, in the mall, by police, trying to use the bathroom, trying to buy a cup of coffee.
Unfortunately, because the novel is told from the point of view of the resentful younger sister, the reader doesn't get to experience those things with Luna. Instead, the reader experiences those things with the sister, who is humiliated on Luna's behalf, and hates Luna for being different and weird and making the sister's life difficult.
Ultimately, though, my biggest problem was the lack of the Internet. Seriously. The book was published in 2003, so I'd imagine it was written some time in the late 90s and never updated. This was a huge problem for me that I could not get over to enjoy the rest of the book (what parts of it I would have been able to enjoy, anyway). Luna makes pocket money by building computers for schoolmates, and knows a successful MTF transgender person who lives in Seattle via the Internet, but Luna doesn't belong to any transgender support e-mail groups or LiveJournal communities or bulletin boards. Neither Luna nor her sister bother to look up transgender support groups in their area. Luna never goes to a psychologist, not even after an almost-successful suicide attempt.
I just didn't buy it. I also had some issues with the ridiculous ending.
However. Some of the small details were really excellent, like the way Luna watched her mother and sister all the time to pick up details on how to act more like a girl. A lot of the transgender stuff was taken right from "Transgender Stereotypes 101" (Luna's obsession with hair, makeup, and sweater sets, for example), but it still worked in the context of the characters and the story. For someone's "My First Novel About A Transgender Person" this would probably work -- like, maybe for a 13 year old?
I also picked up Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin
. Basically it's about a cisgendered female teenagers who changes into a cisgendered male teenager for four days every month, and finds it so traumatizing that she teaches herself how to hypnotize herself in order to forget the experience.Well, I'd like to hypnotize myself into forgetting my experience of reading the book, and I only got about 20 pages in. I am not interested in reading books about girls who are obsessed with fashion, beauty, dieting/being skinny, and getting dates to the prom ever, even if they do change into boys for four days every month. Reviews called this book "fresh" and "edgy" and "witty" but I saw none of that on the pages. I might decide to slog through it some time if I am particularly bored some day, but not until I am really desperate. I wasn't interested in hanging out with those girls when I was in high school; I am definitely not interested in reading books about them now that high school is more than a decade behind me.
...Blah blah blah. In other news, less cranky-making news, I got an invite to Google Voice. So now I have a Google Voice phone number. I just... am not sure what to do with it. I've had the same cell phone number since I got a cell phone back whenever that was (2003?), and I don't even use that most of the time. It's pretty helpful when I want to Twitter about gas prices in the middle of Iowa or text message my sister to remind her to get extra olives on my sandwich or... I don't know. Every once in a while I actually make a phone call and talk on the telephone, but that is pretty rare. Mostly I use my phone to call my sister on the second floor when I am on the first floor and want her to come downstairs or tell me what she wants for supper from the Chinese place. Oh, and the other day I called my mom to tell her to pick us up at the Italian bakery instead of the surgeon's office, because I'd had a hankering for bread and vodka sauce and pignioli cookies.
So... what do I do with yet another phone number??
P.S., guys, if you're ever in Brooklyn and find yourself in dire need of vegetarian vodka sauce or delicious Italian cookies or a cup of strong coffee and a scoop of gelato or spumoni, I recommend Michael's! You'll also be about five minutes away from my house, so stop by and play with the cats!