Chinese-Canadian author Kim Fu beautifully explores transgender identity in her debut novel ‘For Today I am a Boy.’
The book tells the story of Peter Huang, favoured in his family as the only son alongside three daughters to his traditional Chinese parents raising their family in a small, mostly white town in Ontario, Canada. Peter faces a lot of pressure to become the man of the house, but deep in his heart knows that he is female.
Fu’s novel is not only a story about being transgender, but it also beautifully explores the relationships between family members. Peter’s older sister Adele seems impossibly glamorous, while his other older sister Helen can’t help but compete with her. Then there’s his younger sister Bonnie, the wild-spirited ingenue. As they grow up, tensions grow and change as they struggle to belong in a country that sees them as a minority.
‘For Today I am a Boy’ is beautifully written and has garnered comparisons to Jeffrey Eugenides. She goes so deeply into the mind of her protagonist that it’s no surprise she found the inspiration for the novel when she was completing a degree in psychology, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Part of her study was reporting levels of satisfaction among people who had gone through gender reassignment surgery. She was struck by the fact that no one in the study had regretted going through gender transition.
She did however, read about Los Angeles Times sportswriter Christine Penner (nee Mike) who came out as transgender in 2007 at age fifty and killed herself the following year. What stuck with Fu was the fact that Penner had suffered in secret until age fifty.
Fu captures this sense of struggle beautifully through her main protagonist Peter, as well as richly textured detail about the family pressure that makes him reluctant to embrace his true self. The book is engaging from the start, addictive and easy to read while simultaneously providing enough detail to keep the reader engaged. While the pace of the book doesn’t really pick up as it goes along, the content and characters are engaging enough that it doesn’t matter.
This book is a great read for anyone who enjoys quality character-driven storytelling, as well as potentially being a useful resource for anyone struggling with their gender identity. While Peter’s story isn’t universal to those who identify with a gender different to the one they were assigned at birth, it’s nuanced enough to be relatable to anyone who has felt unable to live up to others’ expectations. It’s an especially interesting read for those who, like myself, are a generation away from the main protagonist of the story who was born in 1979. Peter comes from a time, place and community where he is unable to find like-minded people, and it is fascinating to see the 20th century as well as the queer community of today from that perspective.
This book will take you a couple of days to read, but give you plenty to think about for long after.
