A Safe Girl to Love
A new edition of the acclaimed debut story collection by two-time Lambda Literary Award winner Casey Plett.
By the author of Little Fish and A Dream of a Woman: eleven unique short stories featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love in settings ranging from a rural Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn. These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show that growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but will never be predictable.
A Safe Girl to Love, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for transgender fiction, was first published in 2014. Now back in print after a long absence, this new edition includes an afterword by the author.
By the author of Little Fish and A Dream of a Woman: eleven unique short stories featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love in settings ranging from a rural Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn. These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show that growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but will never be predictable.
A Safe Girl to Love, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for transgender fiction, was first published in 2014. Now back in print after a long absence, this new edition includes an afterword by the author.
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Community Reviews
I don't know how to adequately express my feedings or thoughts right now for this book except I could grasp the connections between each story/chapter of the women characters just living their lives in the (mainly) different moments in their lives/transitions.
Regrettably, a common theme in the stories were transphobia, abuse, splinted familial relationships, Sw, social anxiety and fears of being bullied or attacked when alone or out in public. I appreciate the author's comments in afterward on her characters being pieces of fiction that may not reflect all trans feme experiences. Minority communities are not a monolith even if some individuals experience similar thing.
Perhaps I will be able to really make a more sound, reflective review at a later time than this one. Until then, my thoughts from my reading journey were as follows:
Regrettably, a common theme in the stories were transphobia, abuse, splinted familial relationships, Sw, social anxiety and fears of being bullied or attacked when alone or out in public. I appreciate the author's comments in afterward on her characters being pieces of fiction that may not reflect all trans feme experiences. Minority communities are not a monolith even if some individuals experience similar thing.
Perhaps I will be able to really make a more sound, reflective review at a later time than this one. Until then, my thoughts from my reading journey were as follows:
- Challenging
- Lots of triggers
- SW
- Homophobia
- Transphobia
- Bullying
- Self harm
- Drug use
- T4T so far in two stories: Not Blank & Lizzie & Annie
Some of this stuff feels like it may come from the author just with the back and forth from Portland Oregon to New York and Canada have some details that are repeated; it just makes me wonder.🤔
A Girl Safe to Love makes me feel the cruel, throttling uncomfortable anxiety, fear and struggles that trans individuals feel in the context of our current world and current political moment. In contrast to the other books I've read so far, this one is giving me the most visceral anxiety and discomfort. I have stated before that I can imagine the feelings some situations have placed on these individuals just based off of my experiences growing up with a disability alone.
And it, idk makes me doublely angry.
"No writer really gets to dictate what the thing does when it's out there, you know? But no writer gets to check out of politics either. And if they think they do, they're fooling themselves!! Our work enters the same world that existed when it started and that world can be rough out there"---Afterword by author love this
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