A review by bradley
Drag King Dreams by Leslie Feinberg

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

NOTE: In the novel, ze/hir is used for any person whose pronouns Max doesn't know. Since the novel is told in first person and I don't know Max's pronouns, I will follow suit. 

This is a book I would have probably skipped over if it hadn't been written by Leslie Feinberg (zie/hir), and I'm largely unsure if thats a good thing or a bad thing. I really like Feinberg and hir nonfiction work in the trans genre. Unfortunately this book is just largely not to my taste.

There are two aspects of Drag King Dreams that keep me from saying I Like it, both of which are completely subjective, and might be something you like, or otherwise don't mind.

Firstly, I don't enjoy reading books in which trans characters are in a constant state of despair. It's not inherantly bad that this book was sad, but it is a reason I dislike it.  And I recognize that Feinberg is making a point, or perhaps a few. Max can't be happy unless ze is in the street with hir people, and you, the reader, need to join hir. I can respect that from that point of view. And some people want to see themselves reflected in their media. Trans people do suffer, and for some, it is cathartic to relate to a character who knows what that's like.

But I'm not that person.  I know what it's like to be worried about bathrooms, stared at, or called slurs. I don't feel the need to do it in my leisure time. In fiction, we can reach infinitely into our imagination, and I don't want to waste that potential staying in the same transphobic society I already live in.

Obviously this book's main demographic is queer people, though the community when it was written and the community now aren't exactly the same. But I think its disingenuous to say that trans people's lives are terrible every minute. We do suffer, and people like Max and hir friends suffer a lot. But life isn't all bad all the time. There are things to smile about sometimes, if not most times. We never see these with Max, and its hard to root for a character who always seems to be as sullen as Max does.

Similarly, and to my second point, I agree with a previous review: Max isn't a very sypmathetic character. I don't like hir very much. For nearly the entire length of the book, Max is miserable. It's hard to want to jump back into that once you've set it down.

And this is more of a  critique of the editor but sometimes new paragraphs would happen at an entirely different time and there was no context to denote that. It made it really weird at times.

I don't think this is a bad book, despite my review and score. The actual writing was about average, and I liked the ending. I liked that Feinberg was intentionally vague about Max's past and aspects of hir gender. I like reading about a character who is militantly queer as myself and my friends. A lot of queer characters are more "I'm gay but I'm just like you underneath," which is not really my style, but I overlook for the sake of having anything to read.

Overall, I score this book on a range from 2.5 to 3 considering solely how much personal enjoyment I got out of Drag King Dreams, NOT of how much I respect Feinberg, hir beliefs, or hir nonfiction works.

ALSO: There are a LOT of triggering things in this book. Please take a look at that list before deciding if you want to read Drag King Dreams. 

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