Parker’s Pages: For Today I Am a Boy
For Today I Am A Boy by Kim Fu stopped me dead in my tracks.
The pure poetry in every line feels like something akin to Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles) or Ocean Vuong (On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous), easy-breezy but powerful, simple and complicated. It is difficult to find a writer quite like Fu, with such command over a narrative, seamlessly moving between past, present, and future without a single falter. Each line felt like its own universe so carefully crafted, and the whole novel moved like a symphony harmonizing in unison.
This coming-of-age story follows a young Chinese American child who slowly comes into their own as a Trans woman. We follow them through their childhood and young adulthood, seeing every folly and triumph, every secretive thought and haunting desire, and the emotions that they push down. It’s not easy to find a story that so effortlessly seems to capture what it is to be Trans, to have different parts of your identity collide and be at odds with each other. There is great attention to intersectionality and how race, religion, sexuality, and gender can all press together in both beautiful and painful ways. This novel brings the reader into the fold of a world somehow both entirely distinct to the main character and deeply relatable to the experiences of us all.
The Evergreen Echo
The story is painful, sometimes heartbreaking, tugging hard at every emotion. There are sections of the novel that are deeply sad, others funny, some enraging, and most of all, a strong sense of loneliness as we watch the main character struggle over and over with themselves and their life. There is a messiness, timelines shifting and colliding, the point of view suddenly jumping, that feels purposeful and a lot like how life and memories play in your head. With each turn of the page, I felt washed in my own feelings of dysphoria, anger, and sadness right along with the main character, as though reflecting on my own story.
But this isn’t to say that the novel is difficult to read or that it is bad; instead this novel feels cathartic. In recognizing parts of myself in the main character, Peter, I felt like I could let out feelings that I hadn’t been able to. While a lot of the novel hurt, there was something in the hurting that felt productive and necessary. The only comparison I could think of was how I felt after watching I Saw the TV Glow (2024) for the first time. That movie chews you up and spits you out, and while it’s chilling and scary, there is something recognizable in that fear that I think any Trans individual would be able to relate to. Similarly, there is something in Peter’s bone-crushing loneliness and fear that doesn’t feel too far away from who I used to be and how I used to feel. And seeing how Peter is eventually uplifted by their sisters and friends eases a lot of the tension throughout the novel.
I was also impressed by how effortlessly the story, while focused on Peter, still gave so much life to every other character, no matter how small their part in the plot. Each and every character in Peter’s life seemed to leap right off of the page. Fu’s attention to details and powerful descriptions made every character feel like someone I could possibly know in my own life, whether they’re a childhood bully, a gritty and grouchy chef, or even a disinterested cashier at a café. Their motivations were clear, their personalities strong, and this added to the sense of vibrancy throughout. It felt charming to have so many characters that seemed to have their own stories within the larger one. The world the Fu creates is so real, it hardly feels like fiction at certain points, completely pulling the reader into its own little cradle of reality.
And of course, Peter’s family was incredibly written as well. Even though so much of the novel is spent with Peter feeling lonely and lost, there was also great emphasis on the sisterhood of Peter and their three sisters. While the sisters sometimes seem like they cannot understand or bear to be around each other, there is also a strong sense of caring between them and an understanding that their parents, especially their father, cannot breach. Of all of the tender moments in this novel, it was the interactions between the sisters that tugged at my heartstrings the most.
The Evergreen Echo
