If you're not familiar, it's a historical fiction novel about the hope that rose up for queer and especially trans people in Berlin before Hitler brought it all crashing down.
Worse it's a book about how the post war American occupation of Germany beat down the "third sex" community when they saved literally everyone else from the camps. Even the murderers got let free… but not the queers.
…
I'm a Transgender, Jewish woman from the US. So of course it affected me deeply and profoundly.
But I just feel hollow now. It's a book that prophesies its own burning. It's an obvious labor of love and incredible research, but I don't know how to function after reading it. How long will it be before it's destroyed by evil men just like the books it talks about were?
It's not even some great masterpiece in the literary sense (though it definitely is as a piece of historical reclamation.) There are a lot of plot contrivances that happen to let the characters live through, understand and show all the brutal, obviously repeating right this very second, history. The characters suffer horribly of course, but they also have a thousand lucky breaks. Their escapes were repeatedly effected by comically unlikely means. It feels almost dreamlike and unreal in its story beats.
…
Maybe I'm just being mean to it…
At the end of the day, I am now ashamed as an American, hopeless as queer person, and disappointed in my Jewish brethren for not sticking up more for everyone who suffered with them.
So yeah, I feel awful and spiteful and I feel like everyone should read this book so they can feel the same way I do. And then they should bury a copy of it in a lead lined chest in an undisclosed location along with all the other brilliant stories the monsters will inevitably burn out of cruel vanity.
S
by chaucer345