Stay Gold

I'm standing in the middle of a tornado of feelings and thoughts that I've never had to deal with before this moment. 

I have about twenty different emotions about this book, and they're all conflicting.

The cover, the blurb, and even the first chapter all suggest this is a lighthearted contemporary YA romance, something cute, hopeful, and optimistic. And yet, even though there are plenty of cute and lighthearted moments scattered throughout the book, it's anything but. It made me cry, seethe, want to hit someone, and I barely got through that one scene by the end, the one viscerally depicting a physical assault against the trans character. Yes, this is probably a spoiler, but I feel it's a spoiler you need to know going in, especially if you are a trans/nonbinary reader. I'm grateful that I knew about it going in. It still left me shaken.

Mostly, when I try to pull my thoughts about this book together, I come up with this conclusion: there are two wholly separate stories there, and it's not because of the dual POV.

<spoiler>One of them is the story of a trans boy, Pony, who just wants to be normal and so he goes stealth in his new high school. He just wants to be known as this sometimes cute, sometimes funny guy, not the trans guy first and foremost. He's not ready to be out, and everyone around him has an opinion about it. His father wants him to "go back to being a girl," his sister doesn't approve of the entire stealth thing even though she's generally supportive, his out and proud friend wants him to be out and proud too. He makes new friends, but to better fit in with those bros and avoid revealing his secret he sometimes has to die a little inside as they all make homophobic jokes. He meets a girl he likes, and she likes him back, but when he comes out to her, she pushes him away because she can't deal with him being trans, and what if people think she's a lesbian? (According to many characters in this book, being a lesbian is just about the worst thing that can happen to someone. Lesbians! Oh the terror! /s)

Eventually, he reaches a very low point after being physically assaulted by homophobic jerks, and then... um... we never know what then. Because then suddenly, in a pretty rushed ending, everything around him is sunshine and rainbows. His father changes his mind. His now-girlfriend  has seen the light and become a passionate ally. His out and proud friend apologizes for pressuring Pony into coming out and praises him for doing it in the same breath. His new bros have suspected he's trans all along and still got his back (and they're sorry for the dumb jokes, they won't do that again). His now-girlfriend's friends who were so against her having anything to do with Pony are not a-ok with it. His assaulters are in jail. The only people who don't cheer on him and support him are some nameless homophobes having an anti-LGBTQ protest on the sidewalk. By getting assaulted Pony has apparently earned his happy ending when it comes to external factors. As for what's going on with him internally, how he process that low point, how he rises up, how he now views these people around him... we'll never really know, I guess. It feels like there's an entire Act III here, left untold.

But there's also another story here, a story for and about allies. Here, the protagonist is Georgia, a girl in a tight spot of her own: her boyfriend cheated on her and dumped, her mom left her dad for some rich guy, Georgia desperately wants to be liked by everyone, she keeps telling ridiculous far-fetched stories to hide the truth about herself, and she keeps turning away from her dreams of writing and journalism in favor of the more socially uplifting cheerleading. She meets a guy, falls for the guy, learns the guy is trans, and it scares and confuses her. Georgia gradually works through the issues she has with this and stumbles upon an entire knot of issues she has with herself. She eventually realizes the importance of living one's truth and supporting others in living their own; she learns that she can make a difference, more than just for herself; that she can change others' lives for the better. She learns to be brave. Her positive impact on Pony's life in particular may seem somewhat exaggerated, but for the purpose of the story she's the center of, this kind of works, with a bit of good old-fashioned suspension of disbelief. Here, we have a complete journey, a beginning, a middle, and a reasonably satisfying conclusion. Nothing feels left out.

This second story is the reason for the high rating I gave this book. I believe allies need stories like this, and we definitely need allies. I believe this can be a very important book for many people.

But as for Pony's story, the trans story, the story about the character I saw my younger self in as I read it... I have some problems with it. I loved Pony. Like I said, I saw a lot of myself in him. I lived through some of those moments he had to deal with. His story, for the most part, is very honest, very real, very well-written. And that's why it makes me so angry that the main part he plays in this book as a whole is that of Georgia's (and, potentially, the reader's) learning experience.  Here's how you treat trans people and here's how you don't. Here are the terrible things will happen if you lean into the don't. Be kind, be supportive, remember that trans people around you are human and have feelings and their lives matter!

Which is all very, very true. And very, very important. But. I don't know. There's something dehumanizing about being designated to a learning experience.

I still believe it's a pretty good book for allies or potential allies. But as a nonbinary person, I feel like I need a warm blanket, a cup of cocoa, and probably to go read about some trans or nonbinary characters just being themselves and having adventures and getting happy ever afters just because they're worth it, and not because someone learned a valuable lesson from their pain.</spoiler>

Read for Queer Lit Readathon (prompt: #ownvoices)

I received a DRC from Edelweiss
TW: transphobia, dead naming, lesbophobia, suicidal thoughts
3.6

For Pony a new school is the perfect fresh start. When he came out as trans he received plenty of attention- some of it bad, some of it just annoying- definitely more than he actually wanted. Now, he can just be Pony, and maybe even cheerleader Georgia's boyfriend. The only problem is, he hasn't told anyone at school that he's trans yet.

Yet again I'm in the position of reading an educational book and appreciating the education its attempting to give, while also being wildly not the target demographic, so I can't say confidently whether or not it succeeds. However, the main goal of this book is not simply educating cis people, but to be the kind of book the author would have wanted to exist when he was younger. My answer to that, no matter how many times I hear different authors say it, is always that that's valid, and honorable, and I love the fact that it isn't actually some new, controversial book. I see a lot of people comparing it to If I Were Your Girl (which, cards on the table, I have not read), and though this is a criticism, I just see it as tangible growth.

Again, since I'm not the demographic, I have to decide whether to prioritize the educational merit versus my own enjoyment, and I'm definitely leaning more towards the education, which is mostly what impacted my rating.

Looking only at Pony, I appreciate that this isn't a book about the pain of coming out and grapping with identity, which is an important topic but also one that has been covered more often in the case of trans IDs, but instead is about your Identity and how it fits into your identity. Going personal for one moment, I hear people talking about people who identify somewhere on the queer spectrum about "putting themselves in boxes", or "making it their whole identity", ect, ect. Ignoring how incredibly frustrating and surface level that is, I think that this book works with that in a very effective way. Pony is the epitome of not doing any of that. He knows he's a boy and he's living as a boy, and though he joined a trans network in the beginnings of his self-discovery he has no apparent interest in being political about it. He doesn't want to be The Trans Kid, he doesn't want to draw any attention to it, he doesn't even want to post an article online that mentions anything like it. And that gets him nowhere. Because when you are this identity, you have to protect yourself by protecting your community. You may not want to be political, but the world makes your existence political. You may want to be the easy going, laughs instead of being offended, non-in your face queer person, but that will not help you, it will not protect you, and it will not make the world and easier place for you to exist in.

Okay, educational rant aside.
Pony is a somewhat likeable character, as much as a lens can be. I like his very fun sister, Rocky, a lot, and his parents are unfortunately very realistic. I also really like Pony's best friend, Max, both as a general character and as a different view into the trans community. The addition of Rocky also felt like a nice reminder to the closeted or simply bored to death readers that there is a huge world out there waiting for you, and you can go be accepted and crazy and do whatever you want as long as you actually take the plunge and live the kind of life you want to live.

The romance is just okay for me, though there are parts where it is sweet. Their chemistry isn't crazy, but it's not impossible that they would like each other. I expected Pony to have more of an effect on Georgia, honestly, and if he had then maybe their relationship would have seemed more real to me. Georgia is fairly flat, and not super likable, but they do go together.

I do have an issue with the writing in this book. It's not an over-all issue, but effected the story for me enough that I have to mention it. The intro to this book made me 100% think I was going to hate it. Jumping in with weird stage directions does not give me the impression that this is a cool character with an interest in film, it makes me feel like this is a new author writing a very obnoxious stock character. Now, Pony did somewhat grow on me, but he also is definitely kind of a stock character. His trans identity and his love of film are basically his only traits. So I was pretty much right with that one, and if I'd known it I may not have wanted to continue.
The beginning also has some weird POV switches that were confusing and unnecessary. Thankfully this doesn't continue in the story, but it did make me doubt the author to the point where I was always waiting for something else weird to happen with his writing style. (Which did happen a few times down the line).

Back to Georgia, because to be frank, I hated her. She's vapid, she's part manic pixie dream girl, part bigot, I just had 0 interest in her and 0 empathy for her. The romance would have hooked me more if I had ever wanted Pony to be with her because even though Pony isn't the most 3 dimensional, Georgia is way worse, and part of her characterization is transphobia.
I recognize, also, that not all people are going to react well to learning someone is trans, and some people are going to need time for it to sink in, but in order to show that and still have the character be likable, you need to be careful with how its handled. The end result for me was a vague disgust with Georgia that never went away.

Also, there's a flatness to the context the characters are in. Politically its fine, the side story of the actor is kind of odd, but the general background is overdone and unexplored. The characters are transphobic as the default, which sucks, and there's that classic "cheerleader & jock run the school" trope that, if it was ever real, hasn't been for a decade at the very least. It feels like there's a narrative pasted over the general, stereotypical "YA teen" settings and roles, and it makes the whole thing less interesting.

This book is not perfect. This book is not a masterpiece. But it is an #ownvoices story about a trans teen, dealing with real life problems and with showing trans people existing without an asterisk or a promised bad ending. And we deserve that!