Review | Openly Straight, Bill Konigsberg

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17934215Bill Konigsberg’s Openly Straight is a thought provoking, unique, take on the LGBTQ coming out story. When Rafe came out in the 8th grade, no one made a big deal about it. His best friend Claire Olivia had figured it out long before. His classmates stopped using words like “faggot” in jokes. His parents threw him a coming out party and his mother even became the president of PFLAG. Thing is, Rafe is tired of being the gay kid. While people don’t tease him for being gay, people still think of him as gay, and he just wants to see how it feels to be seen as just Rafe. So he transfers to Natick, an all boys boarding school, for his junior year and vows to begin afresh. It wasn’t that he was going back into the closet; he just wouldn’t mention his sexuality, and people would assume by default that he was straight. It’s a form of heterosexism — people are assumed to be straight unless they say otherwise — and Rafe wanted to use it to his advantage.

Many of the LGBTQ YA books I read are about coming out, so Konigsberg’s approach intrigued me. Post-acceptance, can society move towards a point where labels don’t matter? By refusing to be labelled “gay”, is Rafe exploring a new kind of freedom or is he denying a part of himself? On one hand, Rafe is enjoying a level of friendship with other guys that he never used to have as “the gay kid.” Free from his past, he easily becomes a popular jock, and can easily converse with his soccer teammates in the locker room shower area without having to avert his eyes. At one point, he makes eye contact with a fellow jock and realizes that, at his old school, he’d have to break eye contact within a couple of seconds, because as “the gay kid,” a prolonged connection would make his classmate uncomfortable. Being just “one of the guys” is liberating.

On the other hand, can he truly be himself when he is keeping his homosexuality a secret? At one point, a couple of his teammates start harassing another teammate for being gay. Rafe stands up for the gay teammate, but then realizes he feels like a fraud: “Who was I? How could I stand up for gay people while at the same time hiding that part of me?” Even more thought provoking, at least for me, he then says:

Straight people have it so much easier. They don’t understand. They can’t. There’s no such thing as openly straight. [67% of Kindle edition]

It’s true. I can reflect all I want about how it might be for society to move to a post-label state. I can march in the Pride Parade and argue passionately for same sex marriage. But I can never fully understand the courage it must take to come out, nor can I fully understand how it must be to live an openly gay lifestyle. As this book points out, being openly gay doesn’t even necessarily mean having a same sex partner; even just having people know you’re gay can make them treat you differently.

As Rafe recalls life at his old school, we realize that acceptance can still lead to Other-ing. His mother gave him a stack of books about homosexuality and he admits that while the material may have been fascinating on their own, that fact that his mother gave them to him made the books feel like “gay homework.” His classmates laugh easily at a couple of football players in drag, but when Rafe does it, even though he too does it for laughs, it is immediately perceived as a political statement — his classmates eye him solemnly and his teachers turn it into an object lesson about the gay movement.

I got tired of feeling isolated, okay? So I decided to tear down that barrier. I came to Natick, and I made a different choice. Not like gay is a choice, but being out definitely is one.

And you know what? That barrier did come down. I arrived here, and for the first time maybe ever, that barrier between me and so-called straight guys disappeared. [92%]

But at what cost? And what happens when Rafe falls in love with one of his friends at Natick? Can Rafe truly escape being labelled gay, and more importantly, should he even want to?

There’s a lot going on in this book, and part of me wishes the ending had been less conventional. I also wish some of the other characters were less predictable — the nerdy outcasts are interesting and show more potential of becoming true friends, while the popular jock leaders are jerks. In a book where the very act of labelling is challenged, I wish these perceptions were challenged as well.

Still, this book is sure to spark much discussion. In a class lecture at Natick, Rafe’s teacher asks if tolerance is enough: “To tolerate seems to mean that there is something negative to tolerate, doesn’t it? Acceptance, though, what’s that?” [46%] And is acceptance even enough, or does it too include a value judgement? “It’s hard to be different,” Rafe’s teacher points out, and while he does propose an alternative to both tolerance and acceptance, Openly Straight shows that it’s never really that simple. And perhaps it doesn’t have to be.

 

 

Happy Canada Day!

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Charles Pachter, Flag # 43, 1981, acrylic on canvas (source: https://www.msu.edu/course/iah/211c/skeen/Flag43.html)

Charles Pachter, Flag # 43, 1981, acrylic on canvas (source: https://www.msu.edu/course/iah/211c/skeen/Flag43.html)

Just because practically everything in the world makes me think of books, I wanted to celebrate Canada Day with a glimpse back into my first experience of Canadian literature. These definitely won’t be the first books I read by Canadian authors — L.M. Montgomery and Margaret Atwood are literary icons even in the Philippines — but truth be told, I only learned these authors were Canadian when I moved here. Still, these were the first books I read primarily because they are by Canadian authors, at a literature class in Thompson Rivers University (then called the University College of the Cariboo), Kamloops, B.C.

The Good Body by Bill Gaston

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I remember being really touched by this book. Retired hockey player Bobby Bonaduce is stubbornly ignoring a medical condition that’s causing him to gradually lose control of his body. In an effort to fix past mistakes, he returns to his hometown and scams his way into university.

It seems almost lazy to choose a book about hockey, but Bobby Bonaduce’s story really spoke to me. When I read it, I had never watched hockey and while many of my classmates seemed to share some childhood memory of playing the game, I had only the most basic idea of how the game worked. What got me though was the horror of Bobby’s experience — I can only imagine how frightening it is to lose control of your body. How much more horrible must it be for a professional athlete, whose whole life revolved around perfect control of one’s body?

Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King

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Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water blew me away with its brilliant, unconventional writing style. It begins with a creation story, and involves four ancient aboriginals who escaped from a psychiatric ward and have a very important mission to fulfill. There’s a bit of a linear, realistic narrative, about a group of people who live in a nearby town, but mostly it’s a lot of myths and Western pop culture references all coming together in a way that’s somewhat chaotic but still really, really works. It’s hilarious and touching, and just a mind blowing reading experience.

I have since read many other books by Canadian authors, and have explored a much wider selection of Canadian literature. Even within that class at TRU, I remember reading more than just these two books, although I really can’t remember the rest of the list. These were the books that stuck with me. When I moved to Ontario, these were the only books from all my classes that I took with me. It’s been eight years since I took that class, and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve read these books since. Still, they’re both on my shelf, partly for sentimental reasons, and partly because I do hope to read them again.

If I were asked now to list my top ten Canadian books, would these even make the list? I don’t know — I’ve read a lot of amazing Can Lit since then. But eight years on and I still remember the impact these books had on me. That’s saying something, eh?

What is your favourite book by a Canadian author? For those who moved to Canada from a different country, do you remember the first Canadian book you read? How’d you like it?

And from me and my bookshelf — Happy Canada Day!

Review | Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Saenz

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12000020This is by far one of the best books I’ve read all year. It’s a story about friendship and family and all the things people don’t say. It’s about silence, and the consequences of that silence, and it’s told in lovely, heartfelt prose. Saenz’s gift is subtlety — beneath a story ostensibly about a friendship between two Mexican American boys is so, so much more. The prose invites the reader to reach deeper, to attempt to grasp what lies between the lines, and yet the story works because there is so much more than what is within our grasp. Like Aristotle and Dante, we sense the depth of secrets the universe has to offer, and as they eventually realize, we find the answers much closer than we might expect.

One late afternoon, Dante came over to my house and introduced himself to my parents. Who did stuff like that?

“I’m Dante Quintana,” he said.

“He taught me how to swim,” I said. [p. 32]

Ari is a bit of a misfit. He has no friends, literally, and always feels out of place when talking to boys his age. His older brother is in jail, for a crime Ari has never been told; his parents never want to speak of the brother, and his father, a stoic, distant man, is struggling with PTSD from the Vietnam War. So when Ari meets Dante, a friendly, open book of a boy who is casually affectionate with his parents, it almost makes no sense for them to get along, and yet they click immediately.

In both family and friendship, while the connections that form may be easy, the relationships are never quite that simple. The contrast between the boys’ families is sharp, and Ari understandably finds it difficult to trust that Dante’s family’s warmth toward him is genuine. Then an accident alters Ari and Dante’s friendship, and forces both to face things they may have been much more comfortable keeping hidden.

And yet there are consequences to keeping silent, and the characters understand that all too well. The refusal of Ari’s parents to talk about his brother causes Ari to have nightmares, all these memories struggling to surface and yet being held back. Similarly, when Dante gives Ari his sketchbook, which he has never shown anyone else, and Ari refuses to look at it, it’s because of what Ari fears — and knows — he’ll find inside. Each time, not talking about something is the easy choice, and each time, it also turns out to be the more problematic one.

I discovered Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe at Glad Day Bookshop. I asked the bookseller for the best novel he’d read recently. Without hesitation, he handed me this book. Turns out I’d bought the last copy he had in stock, and I discovered on Twitter the next day that there was someone after me who also wanted to buy it. I read it, absolutely loved it, and recommended it to my sister. Upon reading it, she marked it as a favourite in Goodreads and did a Google search for other books by this author. That’s just the kind of book this is. So read it. I hope you like it, and if you do, pass it on.