Parrotfish
Summary:
Parrotfish tells the story of a transgender boy, who has recently chosen his new name: Grady. This novel follows Grady’s story as he tries to make his family understand and accept him for who he is, and the difficulties he faces at school, not just with his peers but with teachers too. Grady’s new friendship with a boy in school, Sebastian, provides a real sense of solace for Grady, as Sebastian instantly accepts Grady for who he is. Sebastian is also not afraid to be himself, and encourages Grady to not continue to pretend to be someone he is not either.
Edited by: Dublin City University
Comment:
This novel explores Grady’s experience of coming out as a transgender boy, who explains it is not the first time he has had to ‘come out’, having come out as lesbian in recent years, which family, friends and the school community found much easier to deal with. Grady meets various difficulties as he battles to be accepted, and he imagines the conversations between other people, demonstrating his deepest fears but also a hope that these can be rewritten differently. Perhaps the most touching and insightful moments of the novel focus on Grady’s internal monologue where he mulls over the sway that gender holds in life from the moment of birth, puzzles over accepted gender norms, and thinks about the difference between gender, sex, and sexuality. Grady describes how he knew that he was a boy from age four or five, and mulls over what elements of a person make them a particular gender.