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Question for Sara on If You Could Be Mine
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From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 10:15:50 -0500
I think Sara navigated multiple dimensions of LGBT experience with great sensitivity. One of the things I especially appreciated about "If You Could Be Mine" was Sahar's naivete regarding transgendered people, because I thought it was an incredibly honest portrayal. She is so desperate to find a way to be with Nasrin--and that desperation is palpable and poignant--that she convinces herself she can become a man without any understanding of what it really means to be transgender and to feel like the body you were born with does not reflect who you are. She doesn't mean to be insensitive but has no way of understanding how the solution she has created in her mind is no solution at all, and that the pain she is experiencing in being separated from from Nasrin is a different pain than what the people in the transgender support group has experienced. She knows she is faking it when she pretends to be transgender, but she doesn't really have an inkling of what she's faking until that meeting with the doctor, when she begins to understand the physical implications of what it means to change.
In your earliest iterations of this book, Sara (maybe when it was just formulating in your mind), did you already know that you wanted to include the struggle of being lesbian and closeted in an oppressive culture and the dimensions of the transgender experience in Iran? I thought the premise of Sahar thinking of sex change as a solution made for such a strong platform to explore both.
Megan
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 10:15:50 -0500
I think Sara navigated multiple dimensions of LGBT experience with great sensitivity. One of the things I especially appreciated about "If You Could Be Mine" was Sahar's naivete regarding transgendered people, because I thought it was an incredibly honest portrayal. She is so desperate to find a way to be with Nasrin--and that desperation is palpable and poignant--that she convinces herself she can become a man without any understanding of what it really means to be transgender and to feel like the body you were born with does not reflect who you are. She doesn't mean to be insensitive but has no way of understanding how the solution she has created in her mind is no solution at all, and that the pain she is experiencing in being separated from from Nasrin is a different pain than what the people in the transgender support group has experienced. She knows she is faking it when she pretends to be transgender, but she doesn't really have an inkling of what she's faking until that meeting with the doctor, when she begins to understand the physical implications of what it means to change.
In your earliest iterations of this book, Sara (maybe when it was just formulating in your mind), did you already know that you wanted to include the struggle of being lesbian and closeted in an oppressive culture and the dimensions of the transgender experience in Iran? I thought the premise of Sahar thinking of sex change as a solution made for such a strong platform to explore both.
Megan
--
Megan Schliesman, Librarian
Cooperative Children's Book Center
School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Through July 31:
600 N. Park Street, Room 4290
Madison, WI 53706
Beginning August 20:
Room 401 Teacher Education
225 N. Mills Street
Madison, WI 53706
608/262-9503
schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu
ccbc.education.wisc.edu
My regular hours are T-F, 8-4:30.
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Received on Fri 29 Aug 2014 10:16:14 AM CDT
