For Today I Am A Boy

(Paperback)

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Winner, Edmund White Prize for Debut Fiction. PEN/Hemingway Finalist, shortlisted in the Lambda Literary Awards. Longlisted for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. Finding one s place in the world can be hard, but sometimes even more elusive, is finding where you fit in your family. Peter Huang and his sisters elegant Adele, shrewd Helen, and Bonnie the bon vivant grow up in a house of many secrets, then escape the confines of small-town Ontario and spread from Montreal to California to Berlin. Peter s own journey is obstructed by playground bullies, masochistic lovers, Christian ex-gays, and the ever-present shadow of his Chinese father. At birth, Peter had been given the Chinese name juan chaun, powerful king. The exalted only son in the middle of three daughters, Peter was the one who would finally embody his immigrant father s ideal of power and masculinity. But Peter has different dreams- he is certain he is a girl. Drawing comparisons from Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex to the work of Amy Tan. Sensitive, witty, and stunningly assured, Kim Fu s debut novel lays bare the costs of forsaking one s own path in defer

Reviews

A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection for Spring 2014A "New York Times Book Review" Editor's Choice "Keep[s] you reading. Told in snatches of memory that hurt so much they have the ring of truth."--"BUST "Magazine"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."--"Library Journal""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. . . 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."--"Publishers Weekly""A young man [Peter] wrestles with gender expectations and his own gender identity in this quietly forceful debut...Peter's search for a sense of normalcy--to finally become his female self--has a redemptive trajectory that feels fully earned. A study of transexuality that's shot through with melancholy while capturing the bliss of discovering one's sexual self."--"Kirkus""""for readers seeking to better understand the trajectory of a young boy who knows he's not like the other boys, this is a well-written and contemporary story."--"New York Journal of Books""a heartbreaking tale of a guy certain he's a girl."--"Cosmopolitan""Overall Fu's commentary is spot on, from her clear-eyed look at the repressive small town in which Peter grows up to her equally illusionless view of the urban, white, middle class LGBT activists Peter eventually encounters later in life. Yet her most remarkable achievement is in creating a quietly unforgettable character, one w

Author Bio

Kim Fu is a Seattle-based writer and editor. Her poetry, essays, and long-form journalism have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada and the US, including Best Canadian Essays 2012. She was born in Western Canada in 1987 to immigrant parents from Hong Kong, and holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. For Today I Am a Boy is her first novel.