Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is a book about history as much as it is about sexuality. Published for the first time in 2002, the book is still one of the “must read” of queer literature and for a good cause.
Eugenides writes so beautifully, so audaciously that the reader can not help but love every single minute of this journey. Callie starts out as a naive, innocent character, who just assumes she is a lesbian, but it is all bigger than that. When she discovers a family secret and the real reason why she is not able to be sexually active, Callie runs away and starts a new life. As Cal. Yes, as a man, because her secret is her intersexuality.
Cal tells his journey, his thought and his adventure in a way that makes him one of the most relatable characters I have ever read about. The story is one about transition, from living as a female to a life living as a male, from native to refugee, from richness to poverty. Eugenides’ way of telling this family’s journey reminded me a lot of Steinbeck, who is my favourite writer. In “Grapes of Wrath” the Joad family has to leave their land and start this odyssey of a journey and the same thing happens for Cal, who flees from his house to find himself.
Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has.
Middlesex is truly a gem, not only of queer literature, but of literature in general.
LitForQueers 