This is the story of Juno, a sharp-witted Irish girl in the 1980s who’s too defiant to find peace in her dysfunctional home or her brutal Catholic school. When a reader directed me to Karl Geary’s new novel, “ Juno Loves Legs,” I couldn’t resist delving beneath its cover(s). Her candid, down-to-earth memoir is a gift to those who seek to understand more about the personal and public journeys trans people face in today’s world.Ī few weeks ago in our free Book Club newsletter, I asked for examples of curious differences between U.S. As she came to terms with her identity, she continued down the political path she had always dreamed of - campaigning for Beau Biden in Delaware, and working to pass LGBTQ legislation in Delaware and later in the Obama White House. Taking baby steps, she came out to friends, family, classmates and mentors, and fortunately found the responses varied but affirming. Being unable to live in the world the way she saw herself finally became unbearable during her senior year of college. Interested in politics from a young age, and also deeply certain she would someday need to tell her parents that she wasn’t a boy like they thought she was, she grew up believing that eventually coming out as a trans woman would make it impossible to pursue her political ambitions. House, McBride wrote her life story before she was elected to office. Now a Delaware state senator and recently announced candidate for the U.S. Reading The Post’s recent survey of trans Americans got me thinking about a powerful book - “ Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality,” by Sarah McBride. Mother and daughter chatted “about their daily shenanigans and potential adventures, anything to bring them back into the fabric of Mom’s memory.” Through this “powerful alchemy,” Lara writes, “art happened: the process of finishing the novel shifted from being an impossible burden to the very life-affirming thing that helped us to heal.” I am only about 50 pages into this sweeping, poetic novel - about a California rancher and his family fighting, among other enemies, Los Angeles over water rights - and I am already hooked. In the afterword, Lara describes the experience in poignant detail: Over the course of several years, she read the book aloud to her mother multiple times, until the characters came to feel like Lara and Marianne’s family. She enlisted the help of her daughter, Lara Porzak, to help her complete the 517-page novel. The Pulitzer finalist (and ex-wife of Salman Rushdie), now 75, not only lost the ability to write but forgot what she had already written. Wiggins was nearly finished writing the book when, in 2016, she had a massive stroke. In fact, I had wanted to write a feature about it because of its amazing backstory. Conveniently, this book was already on my TBR pile. Who better to offer a book recommendation (other than the contributors to this column)? So, I asked my friend: What’s the best book you have read this year? Without skipping a beat, he answered: “ Properties of Thirst,” by Marianne Wiggins, which came out in paperback in May. I was lucky enough this summer to have a longtime librarian as a house guest.
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