A celebration of trans identity, queer sexuality, and the painful pursuit of artistry embodied. Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante is different from your typical memoir. In fact, it’s not a memoir at all. In Plante’s latest novel, she weaves together a fictional biography about Tracy St. Cyr, a trans-punk artist whose vivid recollections of her coming-of-age are slowly unveiled to the reader in two parts, each a letter to a former lover during a different transitionary period of her life. The introduction sets the rules for the book. Hazel Jane Plante even has a cameo as a ghostwriter for Tracy St. Cyr, a metafictional narrative incorporation that begs an apprehensive reader to eagerly flip to the next page. This book is unlike anything I have ever read. It demanded my attention. Throughout the book s well-paced and gorgeous “Side A”, the depictions of first love and first sexual encounters are languid and ephemeral. It is
Dear Kama,
Your book arrived in the mail today. I want to say at the outset that I think what you did with
ZOM-FAM is spectacular. Just fucking spectacular. It is brilliant, nourishing, expansive, decolonial, profound, tender, and gorgeous. It made me cry tears of joy. Honest-to-goodness tears of fucking joy. Wow. That hasn’t happened in a looooong time.
I adore how your opening poem invokes and honours “the women & femmes / who reshape the universe.” It was a majestic way of inviting the reader into your book and your life. And, then, like that, we are catapulted to a kaleidoscopic, polyphonic vision of your birth and how you got your name. (I love that you plant the seed of your name here and only later peel back its onion-like layers.)
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