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language: English
country: USA
year: 2020
form: novel
genre(s): literary, YA
dates read: 1.9.23
Araña’s Ocotillo was printed by Jamie Berrout as part of the Trans Women Writers Collective’s booklet series in 2019; it was the third to last booklet in the original series (now revived under the aegis of River Furnace) — it was released just before lockdown in 2020, and as such I wasn’t able to pick up my hard copy until the end of 2021, and I’ve only just, finally, gotten around to reading it.
it stands out from the rest of the series by virtue of being — fundamentally — YA (and on the young side thereof), which I was not expecting. the protagonist is an Indigenous Chicana trans girl living (implicitly) in the Texas border region where Araña herself grew up. in three chapters (“Roots” / “Thorns” / “Flowers”), Ocotillo follows her as she navigates her first relationship with a boy and her relationship to her best friend Sarai, the first person she came out to. she’s also beginning to explore her interest in and talent for visual art, navigating the constraints of institutional transphobia and homophobia as she does (one of her pieces is banned from a school district art show, for example).
the dialogue is written in a kind of eye dialect with a lot of dropped final consonants — “We walk aroun’ the back an’ find a big steel door, tons a scratches on it” — which contributes to the protagonist’s really strong and clear voice, which felt believably teenaged and, while I sometimes find this kind of writing a little grating, nonetheless very engaging. the whole thing is written as a story she’s telling to an unnamed/unknown listener, and the conversational tone keeps it from feeling too heavy even when it’s dealing with some objectively heavy things (both transphobia and teen romance as inflected by transphobia).
it’s short and bittersweet, but ultimately, in spite of this, more sweet than bitter. as the protagonist (who doesn’t settle on a name until the very end, which is why I haven’t named her) says at the end, “Yeah, it’s corny, but sometimes corny shit happens. An’ sometimes I like it, okay?”
moods: emotional, hopeful, reflective