If I Was Your Girl

Product Information

The good news is that Amanda (obviously) didn’t die and her cry for help led her to a support group which really helped, sympathetic friends, counseling and, after she turned 18, transitioning via hormones and surgery. This is the source; you can also find her booking information, and a better article here (thanks to Catherine for this information). I couldn’t survive it if I came home and found you…” she trailed off, staring at the light-yellow wall. You can feel the emotion in the readers voice like she's actively living it and the story… just fits. Both novels explore themes of gender identity, sexuality, poverty, trauma, and mental illness in Southern Appalachia, though they're lighter and way less bummer-y than that list might imply.

If I Was Your Girl is an own voices novel centered around Amanda, a transgender girl growing up in a small American town. Here you’ll find anything and everything friendship, bookish and gay, with maybe some writing and film reviews thrown in. Her mother is very supportive but Amanda’s home town isn’t a safe place for her since she started living openly as a girl. This is the perfect book for introducing trans characters to someone who may have zero experience with them in fiction or reality. It’s a wonderful introduction into LGBTQ literature and would be a great place to start for people who may not have many LGBTQ connections in their own lives.

I would definitely recommend this as a place to start with LGBTQ books and just for anyone who likes YA romances. Nevertheless, it seems like a very convenient plot device as compared to some of the more deft characterization. And even if a cis individual doesn’t believe that, equating transgender with gender confirmation surgery still reinforces this harmful notion. Later in the evening, she is confronted in the bathroom by a drunk Bee who comes on to her aggressively. and I respect Meredith Russo for bringing up important topics, like - SPOILER - the rape of trans women.

If I’d had the strength to be normal, I thought, or at least the strength to die, then everyone would have been happy. Featuring a vibrant rainbow design, and our super-sized Q logo, you won't find a more stylish way to make a statement.You can complain all you want about how that isn’t right and shouldn’t be, and you’d be right, but it’s still a very real fear today. But, by high school, her parents are divorced, and Amanda has been living with her mother in Atlanta where she is subject to horrible bullying. This book too had an open ending; Amanda had tied the loose ends, but her relationship with Grant was confusing and left open.

But Amanda has some pretty big issues with self confidence and is concerned that he might be gay and only likes the boyish things about her left over from being raised as Andrew. She declines any advance knowing that it would only cause trouble and that her dad would strongly disapprove. But it’s okay because they too were genuinely lovely people, and I have to admit that Chloe was my favourite just because of the ONE scene where she’s an absolute bad-ass who’s taking no prisoners.If I Was Your Girl was very heart-wrenching at times, but Amanda’s courage and ability to fight against peoples’ attempts to destroy her is also strangely uplifting. He walked to the front door in that clockwork way of his, hands in his pockets and elbows pointed at symmetrical angles. The majority of the plot works around Amanda trying to, or wondering whether she should, tell the new people in her life that she’s trans. That’s she worthy and beautiful and the most important thing is that she’s living life as her authentic self. After a particularly vicious attack in a mall bathroom, Amanda becomes so depressed that she is at risk of suicide.

She tells everyone about who’s had an abortion, who’s secretly gay, and most importantly that Amanda was born male. I wasn’t in the best place mentally when I read this book and it was really sad at certain points, but I still don’t regret reading it. It's in an important place right now and it should (and probably will) pave the way for more books featuring transgender characters.He got up without waiting for a response and threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table next to our half-finished meals.