last book i adored was Nevada by imogen binnie, and it's not even cuz i used to know imi. it's the single realest depiction of the 20-30-something american lower-middle-class white trans female experience.
it's a pleasure to read a trans narrative i could so fully identify with. imi's super smart and expertly teases out all the confused strands of transmisogyny and double standards that constrain us. i was like damn, fuck, wow, every few pages.
it's also extremely funny.
you can get a free copy at this website. i think they just wanted to get this amazing novel into as many hands as possible. it can really help people.
@alyx i really liked the writing style of it, like how people actually talk and write (though it did make things confusing sometimes...)
but oh boy was it totally unrelatable to someone who lives in the uk and doesn't know much about drugs haha
@candle oh that's super interesting. i am pretty naive about drugs but i didn't feel put off by that aspect.
i would have perhaps expected american / UK cultural differences to be a bigger factor. i'm so thoroughly embedded in this country, like a fish in water, that it's hard to intuitively understand how non-usians will view our weird-ass culture. things i take for granted may seem bizarre or decadent.
@candle heh, yeah, that's right, you can't escape our hollywood.
@candle now that i'm approaching 40 i've lived a bit and things from my youth seem Old
now i can get perhaps a similar "only in the movies" feeling by watching stuff like 1982's E.T., which depicts an idyllic CA suburb that pulls at my nostalgic heartstrings all the more because that slice of American reality -- kids zooming everywhere on bikes, less development, more mom and pop stores, '80s music and culture -- no longer exists except in my memories and celluloid.
@alyx it's not such a huge gap of course, because we are exposed to a lot for tv and films, but then again it gives american life a strange only-in-the-movies feel to it hah