Double Exposure

September 1, 2014
Alyx, an intersex teen, leaves California for Milwaukee to live as a girl for the first time. After being bullied by vicious Ricky "Prickman" and his crew for being a "faggot," Alyx and her mom decide she needs a fresh start. With a new last name and a new set of pronouns, Alyx moves with her mother to her grandpa and uncle Joe's Midwestern home. Tall and a lover of basketball, Alyx becomes quick friends with her school's varsity team, including pushy and dangerously hot-tempered Patti "Pepper" Pitmani. Background information about intersex conditions and Alyx's own experience of her body are woven easily into the text, informative without being either dry or sensationalistic. If anything, the author errs toward telling readers too little. Without much discussion of Alyx's sexual orientation, it is difficult to tell on what level slurs like "faggot" and "dyke" affect her. Similarly, Alyx's teammates and school authority figures' responses to her history being revealed are almost distractingly understated: Given Alyx's fears, the insistence that Milwaukee is a conservative town, and the national reality of gender-based bullying, having only one or two straw-man characters approach Alyx with any hostility comes across as both anticlimactic and difficult to believe. This necessary story is warmly told but occasionally feels incomplete. (Fiction. 14-18)

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October 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-After Alyx is attacked by the school bully, her mother decides they need a fresh start, and Alyx is ready. Born with ambiguous genitalia, Alyx has lived her life as a boy, but knows that her true identity is a girl. Her parents chose to do nothing when Alyx was a baby, not wanting to choose her identity for her. A move to Wisconsin gives her the opportunity to be her true self, a complicated undertaking. Patti, nicknamed "Pepper" because of her hotheadedness, befriends the young woman and encourages her to join the basketball team but quickly starts bullying the teen. When Alyx's identity is called into question, her past comes to light and threatens her basketball eligibility. Though the writing sometimes feels stilted and the story not always believable, the protagonist's feelings and conversations about her identity are poignant. She debates which locker room to use and uses words such as gender fluid, intersex, and genderqueer when she thinks about herself. At her lowest times, she feels neither male nor female or maybe both or like a mutant. Information about doctor's reports, reconstructive surgery, and the way people have treated her provides a complex look at what Alyx has faced and what is ahead. Though the ending feels too tidy, this is an important addition to the small field of books featuring an intersex character.-Amanda MacGregor, formerly at Apollo High School Library, St. Cloud, MN

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