Raven Girl
by Audrey Niffenegger
2013
Although she's best known for The Time Traveler's Wife, most of Audrey Niffenegger's books are more like Raven Girl - shorter illustrated books, that tell strange fairytale-like stories, blending hope and sadness, supernatural romance with realistic concerns.
Raven Girl is about the daughter of a postman and a raven who fell in love. She's born from an egg and has hollow bones, but otherwise looks human. She can read and write, but can't speak, and she longs to fly, she feels there's an innate wrongness with her body because she can't.
The raven girl grows up and goes to college. She catches the attention of a boy - I wouldn't go so far as to say she actually meets him, at least not for awhile - who has a crush on her from afar, who thinks he knows what's best for her, and who, like so many boys, is willing to commit acts of violence that he tells himself are for her benefit, although I'm getting ahead of myself.
At college, the raven girl also meets a biology professor, a plastic surgeon who performs rather outré surgeries for people who want them. He listens when she tells her about her body dysmorphia, and he's willing to try to replace her arms with giant raven wings if she thinks that will reduce her discomfort in her own skin, although he warns her, they might not be fully functional, and she might never fly.
Yes, that means Raven Girl is kind of a fantastical transgender allegory - something I had no idea of when I picked it up, solely on the basis of the author's other works and the cover art - and a shockingly good one at that.
Often, when scifi or fantasy stories include trans-like characters, they can use technology or magic to fully and completely become a cis-gender person in a way that avoids the way that real-world bodily changes are slow, partial, incomplete, painful, the way that you can change your body's future but not its past, that you can become a palimpsest but never a blank page. The surgical intervention in Raven Girl is much more like reality than it is like magic.
I'm also usually very hesitant about metaphors that relate being transgender to feeling like another animal species. I think these comparisons are often made in bad faith, and are used to belittle the transgender experience by making it sound akin to young children being unable to distinguish their imaginative dress-up play from adult decision-making. (The kids' book Fox the Tiger for example, reads to me like it's trying to convince trans kids that it's okay to play at being another gender as a game, but that after the costumes come off, Fox will always still be a fox and will never really be a tiger.)
I worry that even good-faith animal metaphors might be written from a place of ignorance, or might be too easily taken up and re-used in bad faith. But again, Raven Girl is thoughtful an emotionally realistic in a way that lets its metaphor capture something real.
So - the raven girl sets to work with the surgeon. The boy who likes her from afar tries to stop her, because he refuses to distinguish what he wants for her and what she wants for herself, and he manages to cause some harm. The raven girl's parents are surprised, but still love and accept her. And other ravens, now that her wings help them to see what's inside her, accept her too.
I'm very impressed with what Niffenegger has managed to create here!
Raven Girl is about the daughter of a postman and a raven who fell in love. She's born from an egg and has hollow bones, but otherwise looks human. She can read and write, but can't speak, and she longs to fly, she feels there's an innate wrongness with her body because she can't.
The raven girl grows up and goes to college. She catches the attention of a boy - I wouldn't go so far as to say she actually meets him, at least not for awhile - who has a crush on her from afar, who thinks he knows what's best for her, and who, like so many boys, is willing to commit acts of violence that he tells himself are for her benefit, although I'm getting ahead of myself.
At college, the raven girl also meets a biology professor, a plastic surgeon who performs rather outré surgeries for people who want them. He listens when she tells her about her body dysmorphia, and he's willing to try to replace her arms with giant raven wings if she thinks that will reduce her discomfort in her own skin, although he warns her, they might not be fully functional, and she might never fly.
Yes, that means Raven Girl is kind of a fantastical transgender allegory - something I had no idea of when I picked it up, solely on the basis of the author's other works and the cover art - and a shockingly good one at that.
Often, when scifi or fantasy stories include trans-like characters, they can use technology or magic to fully and completely become a cis-gender person in a way that avoids the way that real-world bodily changes are slow, partial, incomplete, painful, the way that you can change your body's future but not its past, that you can become a palimpsest but never a blank page. The surgical intervention in Raven Girl is much more like reality than it is like magic.
I'm also usually very hesitant about metaphors that relate being transgender to feeling like another animal species. I think these comparisons are often made in bad faith, and are used to belittle the transgender experience by making it sound akin to young children being unable to distinguish their imaginative dress-up play from adult decision-making. (The kids' book Fox the Tiger for example, reads to me like it's trying to convince trans kids that it's okay to play at being another gender as a game, but that after the costumes come off, Fox will always still be a fox and will never really be a tiger.)
I worry that even good-faith animal metaphors might be written from a place of ignorance, or might be too easily taken up and re-used in bad faith. But again, Raven Girl is thoughtful an emotionally realistic in a way that lets its metaphor capture something real.
So - the raven girl sets to work with the surgeon. The boy who likes her from afar tries to stop her, because he refuses to distinguish what he wants for her and what she wants for herself, and he manages to cause some harm. The raven girl's parents are surprised, but still love and accept her. And other ravens, now that her wings help them to see what's inside her, accept her too.
I'm very impressed with what Niffenegger has managed to create here!
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