For Today I Am A Boy - Softcover

Fu, Kim

3.77

3,431 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1443412643 ISBN 13: 9781443412643

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014

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A stunning literary debut: Peter is the prized only boy in his Chinese-Canadian family. But inside, he knows he is a girl . . .

At birth, Peter Huang is given the Chinese name juan chaun, meaning powerful king. He is the exalted only son in a family of daughters, the one who will finally fulfill his father’s dreams of Western masculinity. But Peter has different dreams: he knows that he is a girl.

Peter and his sisters elegant Adele, shrewd Helen and Bonnie the bon vivant grow up in a house of many secrets, then escape the confines of small-town Ontario and spread from Montreal to California to Berlin. Peter’s own journey is obstructed by playground bullies, masochistic lovers, Christian ex-gays and the ever-present shadow of his father.

Sensitive, witty and stunningly assured, Kim Fu’s debut novel is a coming-of-age tale like no other, one that lays bare the costs of forsaking one’s own path in deference to a road mapped out by others. Both lyrical and unflinching, For Today I Am a Boy shows us an unforgettable struggle: the story of a woman in the body of a Chinese-Canadian man and marks the emergence of an astonishing new Canadian literary voice.

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Book Description:

HMH hardcover, 2014, previous ISBN 978-0-544-03472-3

From the Inside Flap:

A fiercely assured debut novel about four second-generation Chinese sisters, one of whom happens to be a boy

At birth, Peter Huang is given the Chinese name Juan Chaun, powerful king. To his parents, newly settled in small-town Ontario, he is the exalted only son in a sea of daughters, the one who will finally fulfill his immigrant father’s dreams of Western masculinity.

Peter and his sisters—elegant Adele, shrewd Helen, and Bonnie the bon vivant—grow up in an airless house of order and obligation, though secrets and half-truths simmer beneath the surface. At the first opportunity, each of the girls lights out on her own—scattering to Montreal, California, and Berlin. But for Peter, escape is not as simple as fleeing his parents’ home. Though his father crowned him “powerful king,” Peter knows otherwise. He knows he is really a girl.

Caught in the no-man’s land between his dreams for himself and the demands imposed on him, Peter’s coming-of-age is a gauntlet of playground bullies, sadistic lovers, Christian ex-gays. But then, after many lonely years, with the help of his far-flung sisters and a young man named John, Peter finds himself inching closer to inhabiting his own life, his own skin.

Darkly funny, emotionally acute, stunningly powerful, Kim Fu’s debut novel lays bare the costs of forsaking one’s own path in deference to one laid out by others. For Today I Am a Boy is an unforgettable examination of how we find our true selves, and marks the emergence of a strikingly fresh literary voice.

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