For Today I Am a Boy
A Novel
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A son of Chinese immigrants discovers his true self in a “sharply written debut . . . a coming-of-age tale for our time” (Seattle Times).
Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, Winner
2015 PEN/ Hemingway Award, Finalist
Lambda Literary Award, Finalist
Longlisted for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection for Spring 2014
A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
Shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
At birth, Peter Huang is given the Chinese name Juan Chaun, “powerful king.” To his parents, newly settled in small-town Ontario, he is the exalted only son in a sea of daughters, the one who will finally fulfill his immigrant father’s dreams of Western masculinity. Peter and his sisters grow up in an airless house of order and obligation, though secrets and half-truths simmer beneath the surface. At the first opportunity, each of the girls lights out on her own. But for Peter, escape is not as simple as fleeing his parents’ home. Though his father crowned him “powerful king,” Peter knows otherwise. He knows he is really a girl. With the help of his far-flung sisters and the sympathetic souls he finds along the way, Peter inches ever closer to his own life, his own skin, in this darkly funny, emotionally acute, stunningly powerful debut.
“Sensitively wrought . . . “For Today I Am a Boy” is as much about the construction of self as the consequences of its unwitting destruction—and what happens when its acceptance seems as foreign as another country.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Subtle and controlled, with flashes of humor and warmth.” —Slate
“Keeps you reading. Told in snatches of memory that hurt so much they have the ring of truth.” —Bust
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
