Verwandte Artikel zu Little Fish

Little Fish - Softcover

Plett, Casey

 
9781551527208: Little Fish
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1551527200 ISBN 13: 9781551527208
Verlag: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

WINNER, Lambda Literary Award; Firecracker Award for Fiction; $60,000 Amazon Canada First Novel Award

In this extraordinary debut novel by the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning story collection A Safe Girl to Love, Wendy Reimer is a thirty-year-old trans woman who comes across evidence that her late grandfather—a devout Mennonite farmer—might have been transgender himself. At first she dismisses this revelation, having other problems at hand, but as she and her friends struggle to cope with the challenges of their increasingly volatile lives—from alcoholism, to sex work, to suicide—Wendy is drawn to the lost pieces of her grandfather’s life, becoming determined to unravel the mystery of his truth.Alternately warm-hearted and dark-spirited, desperate and mirthful, Little Fish explores the winter of discontent in the life of one transgender woman as her past and future become irrevocably entwined.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Casey Plett is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning short story collection A Safe Girl to Love and co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers. She wrote a column on transitioning for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and her reviews and essays have appeared in such venues as The New York Times ArtsBeat. She is also the publicity and marketing coordinator for the publishing house Biblioasis.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1The night Wendy's Oma died, she had sex dreams. Only sometimes did she have sex dreams'usually Wendy had nightmares and usually she was being chased or hurt. But this morning in her dreams when her Oma died, a girl was fucking her over an old television in an abandoned gym. She woke up with her phone dinging. Her dad. Call me when you get up it's important.Wendy put her face back in the pillow with her hair piled around her like a hill. She trailed a long arm down the side of the bed and skittered her phone across the floor. Her bladder was pulsing; sunlight through a crack in the curtain was hurting her eyes. She was still drunk and every part of her hurt. Wendy lay there curled into herself in the half-light, her head softly beating, not sleeping. She lay there like that for a full hour. Her pee swelled and the light grew brighter.When the phone rang, she made her body get up and scrabbled on her haunches for where her phone had gone behind a bookcase. It was her father."Jesus shitstick Dad, what," Wendy said. Her voice was deep and raspy, a smoker’s voice though she rarely smoked anymore. Her words felt chunky in her mouth as a potato. She was still drunk. She was going to feel fuzz behind her eyes for the whole day. Her dad was crying. "Ben?" said Wendy, putting a hand to her mottled face, ruddy-cheeked and pale."Ben? Dad?" It was chilly and the first snows were sticking. She tied up the curtain and shut the window to let light and warmth in her room. Her legs were shivering.===================================================================The funeral was quiet and simple, at the EMC Church out in the country. Wendy wore a simple black dress. She cried exactly once, during a hymn, silently and horribly, like a little girl told to shut up. But for the rest of the day she felt warm and blessed. She felt a lot of love for her grandmother. She felt grateful she'd had so much time with her Oma. She felt grateful Oma’d been given a long life. In that way, Wendy had a beautiful, strange synergy with all the old Mennonites in the room, the ones who ignored Wendy or spoke to her in microseconds and hushes. The ones who truly believed the old woman was in heaven. They and Wendy both, they were all sad she was gone. But they were happy to think about her too. That's the difference, Wendy thought, between now and everybody else she'd known who died.When she saw someone she didn't want recognizing her, she leaned forward so her hair made curtains around her face. It was stupid. It would be hard to mistake her around here—her hair was black and went down to her waist and she was tall for anyone's standard.And what, what was the point in fighting? Sacrifice wasn't meaningless. It'd been eight years since she said to them I'm a girl and some things you couldn't fight that long. She was angry about it, but she didn’t start anymore. She did not appear in the obituary or funeral program and her dad had warned her about it ("It's out of my hands, I'm sorry") and it pissed her off but she didn't say a word. Her family had gotten kinder over the years. It wasn't that hard.===================================================================Back at her Oma's house, neighbors brought hot dishes and a Superstore bag of buns then they left. Her aunts began preparing the table. Wendy came in the room with a beer, looming over them like a tree. "Can I help with anything?""Oh well thank you Wendy, but we're very set here! You just go ahead and enjoy yourself. You go visit."Wendy sat and drank her beer as her uncles and cousins in the living room played on their phones.She listened to her aunts gossip, about their kids, about their sports teams. One of them left to fetch her daughter to run to the van. When they ate, nobody cried. It was like a normal family gathering and no one was crying and did Wendy care that she flinched every time she heard the word "guy" did it matter? It didn’t matter. Her grandma was dead.===================================================================Long after everyone else went to bed, Wendy was on the back porch staying up with the men. "You remember how Mum would pack us homemade tomato juice?" yelled her dad."Oh! Nai jo.""Hahahahaha." He was blitzed. "Complete with fuckin' tomaaaaato chunks! You'd be trying to look all fuckin' cool for some girl swiggin' in your lunch and your whole mind's on how you're ever gonna get your hand up her shirt SPLOOSH,” and Wendy and her uncles all laughed. They laughed and drank and laughed. There were cigars. Wendy smoked one. She enjoyed the rich ugliness of cigars. Someone took a picture that she later loved and put on her wall: Her sitting dazed and drunk on the bench next to her dad, cigar in her mouth, her hair streaming down her sides like onyx waterfalls and light snow coming down, vertically, American postcard-style snow. Ben was leaning back with his mouth tilted against the sky, grey hair flowing under him, like a mane. ==================================================================="There's probably tomato juice still in there.""Is anybody else frightened to look in the fridge.""Need the morgue more for the fridge than we did for her.""Nai jo.""Jesus Christ," Ben said. "So when Wendy's mum'God rest her soul'when she first ever came to the house. She’s this big city girl from university, right. Here at our fuckin' backwater-ass'""'and you're still trying to get your hand up her shirt.""Probably on this bench.”Wendy laughed and hacked something up."You ok, girl?" said Ben.Wendy coughed. "I'm fuckin' grand.""So here she is," he continued. "This smart and sophisticated city girl, she thinks she's coming to the farm for some hearty country meal, right? And we're all sitting there'""We know brother, we were there.""Yeah, well, Wendy wasn't." ("Yeah shut up, I wasn't!" Wendy said. She loved this story.) "So we're all sitting there, and Mom comes in with a big ol' bowl of soup, slams it down'and there's a fuck-ing chick-en leg sticking right out of it!""Chicken's probably still there too.""Your mother said grace on that one, God bless her."Wendy hadn't brought her winter coat. She was so sleepy, and almost went in to bed, but instead got a blanket and wrapped it over herself and sipped her dad's vodka and listened. Wendy liked being quiet around her family. And being quiet wasn't usual for her. It was nice. She didn't remember going inside. ===================================================================Two mornings later in her dreams Wendy was being chased down a long hallway with carpet. And white wallpaper with the patterns of cherries and locked wooden doors. Her hair was short in this dream. She was running fast but they were faster.When she woke it was morning but not daylight. She put on her slippers, and her long muscles creaked and uncreased as she stood up from the living room fold-out in her nightgown, lacy and shimmering and moon-blue.She went to start the coffee and stood by the kitchen window and saw slivers of purple breaking through the dark. The coffee burbled and rays of orange and magenta and violet spread out over the snow. Everyone else was gone and Wendy and Ben were going back today. It was always sad leaving here. And how many more times would she be coming back now. Realistically.==================================================================="Dad.""Yeah.""When are we leaving?""I thought we'd head out at noon."“You’re kidding me! That’s so early.”"I know I got this guy to meet.""Whatever. It’s fine.”“Good.”“Who do you'“"Ssssh sssh ssssh this part's important!"They were watching cartoons. Wendy rolled her eyes and got up for more cereal; her grandparents’ old house the kind of space it was hard not to eat in.Then in the kitchen, the phone on the wall rang. "Hello?" Wendy said into the receiver."Hello!" The voice was unfamiliar and female and old....

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Arsenal Pulp Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1551527200
ISBN 13 
9781551527208
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
295
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
49078
Deutschland