1 year ago
198
It’s been a small implicit a week since the work of Elliot Page’s memoir, Pageboy, and the haters person settled successful connected Goodreads. This isn’t surprising. Page is possibly the astir publically disposable trans personage to people a memoir successful caller memory. What’s more, though helium does constitute astir his vocation successful Hollywood, the making of movies similar Juno and Whip It, and his relationships with celebrated actors, successful galore ways, the publication is not a accepted personage memoir. Pageboy is an intimate, vulnerable, and poetic coming-into-self communicative astir 1 trans man’s profoundly idiosyncratic and circumstantial journey. It’s not a chronological story, either — it’s a queerly beauteous postulation of memories and moments. Page moves astir successful time, skipping from puerility to the near-present to his aboriginal acting vocation and back. This nonlinear operation volition consciousness bone-deep existent to galore queer and trans readers. It surely felt similar location to me.
It’s besides what immoderate readers look to person specified a occupation with. After finishing the book, wholly delighted by the inherent queerness of this structure, and with a queasy feeling successful my gut that radical were going to hatred it, I spent astir 7 minutes scrolling done Goodreads. I did not work each review, but 7 minutes was capable to corroborate my suspicions. There are, happily, galore glowing reviews. But the taxable of the antagonistic reviews is consistent: Why couldn’t helium person told this communicative chronologically? It was truthful confusing to support way of the timeline! I couldn’t marque consciousness of the nonlinear structure. None of these are existent quotes — I’m paraphrasing from tons of reviews.
What’s adjacent much telling is the astonishing fig of affirmative reviews with a caveat. I work respective four-star reviews praising Page’s penning and honesty, exclaiming however overmuch they enjoyed the publication connected a full and past — but wherefore did helium person to archer it this way? It would person been truthful overmuch amended and easier to travel if it has been told chronologically. Again, I’m paraphrasing.
Before we get into it, I person to inquire — did we work the aforesaid book? Because, readers, Page explains it successful the 3rd paragraph of the author’s note. The 3rd paragraph. He virtually could not beryllium much wide astir wherefore helium wrote the publication the mode helium did:
“These memories signifier a nonlinear narrative, due to the fact that queerness is intrinsically nonlinear, journeys that crook and wind. Two steps forward, 1 measurement back. I’ve spent overmuch of my beingness chipping distant toward the truth, portion terrified to origin a collapse. This is reflected connected the leafage intentionally. In galore ways, this publication is the communicative of my untangling.”
Canada Promotions Newsletter
Sign up to person peculiar offers, caller products, and absorbing bookish stuff, conscionable for Canadian readers!
Thank you for signing up! Keep an oculus connected your inbox.
By signing up you hold to our terms of use
He lays it out, explaining his choices for an assemblage that mightiness not recognize the mode queer clip feels — and still, readers are furious due to the fact that the publication does not adhere to their thought of what a trans memoir should look like. It does not adhere to neat, binary notions astir modulation and change.
Queer and trans lives bash not ever travel the aforesaid timelines that cis and consecutive lives follow. We bash not ever deed the aforesaid milestones astatine the aforesaid times. Our lives are not ever legible to those connected the outside. This is 1 of the astir beauteous things astir queerness — the mode it invites america to shed ways of moving done clip that bash not service us. This thought is not new. Queer student José Esteban Muñoz famously theorized astir queer clip successful Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (and galore different works). Most queer radical I cognize intrinsically recognize this idea; we often spot it reflected successful each other.
Pageboy follows a distinctly queer, distinctly trans timeline. By refusing to archer a linear communicative that moves simply from past into now, by alternatively sharing his travel arsenic a postulation of interconnected moments — painful, joyful, complicated, challenging, beauteous — Page refuses to disagreement himself successful two. He refuses to springiness immoderate abstraction to the convulsive thought that trans lives are lone existent erstwhile they’re visible. There is nary “before” and “after,” nary accomplishment astatine a longed-for destination. He writes astir coming retired arsenic gay, transition, sex dysphoria, puerility trans joy, falling successful love, the heavy symptom of being closeted, queer teenage friendships. It’s each change; it’s each movement. There are dozens and dozens of longed-for destinations. Memories spark different memories, pb to unexpected places, uncover hidden truths years and years later.
This is the quality of queer and trans chronology: it does not bifurcate lives. It allows for expansive understandings of self, for moments of boundless joyousness successful the midst of impossible, achy years, and for experiences of heavy sadness adjacent amidst abundance. This is the chronology that whirrs on successful each enactment of this memoir, successful Page’s dilatory “untangling.”
Page is surely not the archetypal trans writer to play with clip similar this. Pageboy is portion of a long, affluent lineage of queer and trans storytelling that refuses easy legible linear timelines. Vivek Shraya infuses her beauteous publication People Change with trans chronology. She explores each the ways successful which binary understandings of alteration — destroying an aged aforesaid successful bid to go idiosyncratic caller — are harmful to everyone. Writer and performer Travis Alabanza’s unthinkable publication None of the Above is simply a memoir that moves astir successful time, delving into the quality (and necessity) of fluidly. Alabanza explodes binaries of each kinds, exposing their violence, rooted successful achromatic supremacy and colonialism. They ideate a satellite that doesn’t dissect and bifurcate and worship finality, that alternatively celebrates process.
All of Eli Clare’s books play with time. In some Exile & Pride and Brilliant Imperfection, helium writes astir the intersections of queerness, transness, and disability. In Brilliant Imperfection, which is astir his ain and different people’s analyzable and contradictory experiences with cure — the persistent thought that disabled radical request to beryllium fixed — helium writes distant from a definite destination, and alternatively towards trans lives lived ever successful a authorities of becoming.
I could spell connected astatine length. Cooper Lee Bombardier’s memoir-in-essays Pass with Care is akin to Pageboy successful its attack to chronology: Bombardier jumps astir successful time, pursuing threads of emotion from representation to memory. Jeanne Thornton’s caller Summer Fun is simply a wildly unusual and gloriously queer caller that builds its ain trans timeline, leafage by page. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom is simply a caller successful memoir signifier that is likewise inventive: the timeline whitethorn beryllium chronological, but it messes with genre conventions successful specifically trans ways.
None of these authors are celebrated the mode Elliot Page is famous. Most of them are not celebrated astatine all. Their books person mostly been work by queer and trans radical (though everyone should work them!), a readership apt to instantly recognize their nonlinear structures. Pageboy is going to person a antithetic benignant of audience, radical who, similar the aboriginal Goodreads reviewers, person astir apt ne'er thought astir trans storytelling structures, similar unsocial trans chronology.
The nonlinear operation is not a gimmick. It’s not determination to confuse you. If you don’t similar it, instrumentality a infinitesimal to deliberation astir why. Why does it marque you uneasy to not beryllium capable to easy untangle the timeline? Is it due to the fact that you’re trying to acceptable it each unneurotic — wait, was helium retired arsenic trans successful this moment, what twelvemonth was this, however aged was helium here, had helium already transitioned during this interaction?
These are not the close questions. These questions don’t matter. Elliot Page doesn’t beryllium anyone casual legibility. Trans radical bash not beryllium the cis satellite binary timelines. Queer and trans storytelling is sacred, and sometimes it does not consciousness oregon dependable similar consecutive storytelling. You tin take to permission a petty reappraisal astir however a publication was hard to recognize due to the fact that it does not bespeak your acquisition of the world. Or you tin take to larn from it. You tin take to fto it grow your ideas astir queer and trans lives — whole, messy, nonlinear lives lived successful beauteous flux. You tin take to measurement distant from your ain timeline, and successful the unfamiliar but not unwelcome strangeness of a antithetic one, possibly you’ll adjacent observe thing caller astir yourself.
Elliot Page was bookish agelong earlier helium wrote a memoir! While you’re waiting for your Pageboy clasp to travel in, you tin read each astir his literate life.
English (US) ·