Synopses & Reviews
Being a girl was something that never really happened for me.―Rae Spoon
Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon are accomplished, award-winning writers, musicians, and performers; they are also both admitted "gender failures." In their first collaborative book, Ivan and Rae explore and expose their failed attempts at fitting into the gender binary, and how ultimately our expectations and assumptions around traditional gender roles fail us all.
Based on their acclaimed 2012 live show that toured across Canada and the US and in Europe, Gender Failure is a poignant collection of autobiographical essays, lyrics, and images documenting Ivan and Rae's personal journeys from gender failure to gender self-acceptance. Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, it's a book that will touch LGBTQ readers and others, revealing, with candor and insight, that gender comes in more than two sizes.
Review
"This book profoundly changed my life; I will step into the word and lexicon of 'gender' differently, I will never be in my body in the same way, I am a different reader forever, and I am grateful. Gender Failure will take you apart and put you back together—I laughed my ass off, I cried my heart out, I yelled my head off, and I ended up in the only place that matters: love, compassion, with our whole bodies." Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water and Dora: A Head Case
Review
"Brutally honest, tenderly funny and totally real, this multimedia collaboration makes for a dynamic, beautiful and important piece of literature." Michelle Tea, author of Valencia
Review
"Ivan and Rae have written a magical, down-to-earth, painfully honest step beyond any predetermined transgender narrative that I know of. At times hilarious, at times heartbreaking, their storytelling is top-notch. This book is unputdownable." Kate Bornstein, author of A Queer and Pleasant Danger
Synopsis
A powerful collaboration between two extraordinary performer-writers on matters of gender and identity.
About the Author
Ivan E. Coyote is the author of seven previous books, the most recent of which is
One in Every Crowd. Ivan is also the co-editor (with Zena Sharman) of the anthology
Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. One of her stories appears in the anthology
It Gets Better, edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller. Originally from the Yukon, she now lives in Vancouver.
Rae Spoon is a transgender musician/writer/workshop facilitator from Calgary, Canada. Rae has been nominated for a Polaris Prize, toured internationally, and released six solo albums. Their first book First Spring Grass Fire was published in 2012 and shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.