Queer Literature: Is It Always As Revolutionary As It Sounds?

Ray Tate

I Am J
By Cris Beam

With all of the LGBT activism cropping up around the world within the past five or six years, it's only natural that the topic has begun appearing in literature with increasing frequency as well. One of the more unique books of its kind, I Am J follows J Silver, a transgender teenage boy discovering and going through the steps he needs to take in order to transition. Through photography and a series of ups and downs with the relationships of people he's close with, J makes his way down the bumpy road to finding his true self while trying to maintain his connections with the people around him.

Being transgender myself, it's always nice to get recommended a book with a transgender character. Much less often, a transgender main character. And even less often, transgender male main characters; I can think of maybe two off of the top of my head that meet this standard. Then, only once in a blood moon, it has a transgender male main character of color. I Am J brings all of these minorities to the table like no other predecessor has done before, and that's cool! That's great! More authors should do that in order to better represent the demographics of the queer community! But even with all of that going for it, this book still brings over-used tropes in LGBT (especially the T) literature that make it frustrating for me, personally, to read-- the whole "I always knew" point of view, for one. It's a perfectly valid way to feel, but in my experience, more often than not, queer people aren't solid in their identity since elementary school or prior. I only started considering gender shortly after I turned thirteen and came out six months later; many queer people don't even question their identities until well into their late teenage years or twenties. It would have been nice if this book addressed that as well, but alas, that's not the case; even three-year-old J forswore femininity before he even knew what that was.

In addition to all of the queer cliches that only queer people are familiar with, J, as a character, has many moments throughout the book where he has made some characteristically misogynistic and homophobic comments that can make him actually pretty unlikable-- for the sake of spoilers, I'll leave out the details on certain key plot points, but on more than one occasion he says some rather hateful things towards lesbians as a whole group. He doesn't really go through any character development through the entire story in regards to that or generally; if you were to ask yourself, "What has J learned through the events in this book?" when you reach the end of the story, you'll be grasping at straws to find anything of any substance.

Now, don't get me wrong with all of the trash that I'm talking; I believe wholeheartedly in including minorities in fiction even if the author themselves isn't a member of that minority, and this book does take a stab at that, but I do also believe that they should leave stories about the minority experience to people who have experienced them. Beam is a prime example of this; she is not transgender and commits the cardinal sin of reducing J to just "transgender," rather than giving him anything of a personality or weaving him into a believable human being. Even though J and I both share the trait as being transgender guys, I find it extremely hard to connect with him emotionally due to his severe lack of an ability to self-reflect; so much stuff happens to him in such a short amount of time, but he never changes as a person! So, if I can't connect with him, then I ask myself, who is there? Nine times out of ten, the supporting characters in this story are either not realistic, centered on one trait (gimmicky or "quirky"), or just completely transparent and robotic in their actions, so I'm left at a dead-end for any way to project myself into this kid's journey.

All in all, I think that this story, as a story, is subpar at best, and that's not really anything new for LGBT literature, if I'm being honest. The characters aren't too great, and the plot is bland and drags on for too long with how little it's based on. However, I will admit that in terms of being a podium for educating people on transgender politics, I think I Am J would be an okay place to start for those who want to learn about transgender terminology and transition without being bogged down by all of the conflicting ideas and opinions in today's social media platforms. Just don't expect it to be integrated too well into the story; everything about hormone replacement treatment sounds as if it was ripped straight from a Wikipedia article and slapped right into the dialogue without a whole lot of thought put into it.