She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision. Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interconnected stories of three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye. When one of their number is brutally murdered, she joins her sisters in forming a vigilante gang to fight back against the transphobes, violent johns, and cops that stalk the Street of Miracles.īut when things go terribly wrong, she must find the truth within herself in order to stop the violence and discover what it really means to grow up and find your family. Under the wings of this fierce and fabulous flock, the protagonist blossoms into the woman she has always dreamed of being, with a little help from the unscrupulous Doctor Crocodile. Striking off on her own, she finds her true family in a group of larger-than-life trans femmes who live in a mysterious pleasure district known only as the Street of Miracles. Boy Oh Boy is our chance to understand Zachary Doss, as well as our strangest selves.įIERCE FEMMES AND NOTORIOUS LIARS: A DANGEROUS TRANS GIRL’S CONFABULOUS MEMOIR is the highly sensational, ultra-exciting, sort-of true coming-of-age story of a young Asian trans girl, pathological liar, and kung-fu expert who runs away from her parents’ abusive home in a rainy city called Gloom.

Doss uses humor to deal with the isolation that each of us experiences-not because we’re alone, but because we’ve become detached from ourselves, our needs, and our desires. This book is so much about space-the physical, emotional, and mental spheres that everyone inhabits. Eventually, you might change so much that you don’t even fit inside your own body. Doss explores how relationships can be all-consuming, how we transform ourselves to fit within their contour. He is forever unattainable, and still you love your boyfriend, even when it hurts you.

Your boyfriend plays jokes on you-plays jokes on the world.

But you must ask yourself whether you have them or they have you. Your boyfriend is many boyfriends, possibly all the boyfriends you’ve ever had or will have. Boy Oh Boy is a collection of queer fabulist stories and flash fictions told via second person, asking readers to share Doss’s explorations of joy and longing.

Painting Dragons by Tucker Lieberman