This month’s backlist book of the month is A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett, a collection of short stories, each featuring at least one trans woman. Here are three reason to get this one on your shelf ASAP:
- The writing. I mean, it’s a straight-up good book with well-written stories, and if you dig short-story collections, this is a great one to pick up. It’s raw and honest and gives voice to far too many women who still don’t get one in literature.
- The diversity of representation. There’s some nice variety of trans experiences here—single and partnered and polyamorous and monogamous and straight and queer and vanilla and kinky and fat and easily read and not easily read.
- It’s not “trans lit for cis people.” Which, ya know, fellow cis people, I think we can cop to very largely writing when it’s us behind the wheel. I’m all for writing outside of your lane but this is a perfect example of #ownvoices at its finest, and why it matters.
Eleven unique short stories that stretch from a rural Canadian Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn, featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love.
These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but never will it be predictable.
Buy it: B&N * Amazon * IndieBound
Mark and Kate have sat next to each other for an entire year, but have never spoken. For whatever reason, their paths outside of class have never crossed.