For Today I Am a Boy

September 16, 2013
It’s a marker of how quickly things change that a novel detailing the thoughts, hopes, and fears of a boy who wishes he would have been born a girl feels like it covers familiar terrain. But even if some of the markers of Peter Huang’s trouble with his body—the experimentation with his sister’s makeup, for instance, or the fascination with women’s self-presentation—are things we’ve seen before, debut author Fu’s sharp eye and the book’s specificity of place (the Huangs live in small-town Canada, where Peter’s father does whatever it takes to fit in and the rest of his family lies to him) provide freshness. Peter grows up; watches his favorite sister go off to college; connives with Bonnie, the sister nearest to him in age (he cooks the meals she’s supposed to be making, while she learns to “wear heels” and “not look twelve”); gets a restaurant job; and plots his escape to Montreal, the city of possibility. Once there, he tries to find a way to have intimate relationships, and eventually, painfully, comes to see that he doesn’t have to be the thing he never was. Although the focus is always Peter, Fu is adept at depicting the shifting alliances between him and his sisters, and at revealing how being an outsider shapes Peter’s expectations and options, which adds another layer to the story.

October 15, 2013

Peter Huang is born to Chinese immigrant parents in small-town Ontario in 1979 as the long-awaited boy in a household of girls. His father, eager to shed all vestiges of Chinese language and culture, speaks his last words in Cantonese after Peter's birth, assigning his newborn son the unofficial moniker Juan Chuan, or "Powerful King." Peter's father holds to strictly traditional ideas about gender and is uncomfortable with his son's reluctance to embrace conventionally masculine pursuits as well as his close association with his sisters. For his part, Peter wants nothing more than to emulate his beautiful, alluring oldest sister, Adele. Emotionally stunted by the disapproval of both his father and society at large and growing up in a home where such things are never discussed, Peter is very slow to realize that his long-repressed dream is attainable. VERDICT In this impressive debut, Fu sensitively and poetically portrays Peter's predicament so that readers feel his discomfort with his own body as well as his painful sense of yearning and the plight of his three sisters, who scatter in all directions to escape their unhappy home. [See Prepub Alert, 7/8/13.]--Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.