Meredith Russo’s If I Was Your Girl
*side note on the cover : The woman on the cover is Kira Conley, a transgender model who has been in the industry since she was 15. Her story is very similar to Amanda’s in that, she always knew she was a woman inside and even remembers feeling that way as a young child.
To read more about Kira, please go here :
https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/model-kira-conley-360-management-10189423/
Text Review and Analysis
When it comes to “Coming-of-age” stories for those who do not fit a stereotypical mold, Meredith Russo rises above other authors with her novel If I Was Your Girl. As the story opens, we meet Amanda who has obvious psychological baggage as she navigates living with her father after suffering some serious bullying at her previous high school. Amanda struggles to fit in, because she is a trans girl who fears her peers have malicious intent. Though many of the new students are welcoming, Amanda is scorned with ptsd that couples with her anxiety to make for awkward interactions though she always has good intent.
High School is always difficult to navigate, as we see in Amanda’s flashbacks from when she began to transition but even more so when challenged with the constant considerations of those who have power over Amanda. In this story, words, Amanda’s father, and her own friends seem to hold an immense amount of power in her mind. Amanda’s trans identity plays a large role in the story as it constantly looms in her mind, again coupling with anxiety to create an interesting inner monologue where Amanda almost makes herself an Other within her own mind.
This story is very different to any of those that we read in class because it deals with not only gender intersectionality, but also the religious freedoms and how a religious environment how open people are to the lgbtq community. In a way, Ortiz Cofer’s Story of My Body parallels to Amanda’s story in that, as Cofer discovers how other people view her, her self perception changes as does Amanda’s. We see in flashbacks to Amanda’s upbringing how her father would often react to her showing any persuasion towards womanhood. On page 63, Amanda as a young child writes a story about being a woman and her father reacts perversely because he begs her that it is a joke to which Amanda agrees because of her fear of disappointing her dad. Alongside the religiosity of those living in Amanda’s new town, there’s also a lot of injustices to deal with such as bullying, recognition of different genders and dead-names as well as dealing with the judgmental pressures of a high school social hierarchy.
In my own opinion, Russo ended her novel in the best way and that is by acknowledging that she is personally not trans and though she wanted to write a story that would expose people to the trans community in a way they would understand but in that, she may have fallen victim to stereotypes and fictionalizing a character because thats what Amanda is- she is not meant to be completely accurate. I think Russo wants people to understand the trans identity but also have room to ask questions about the reality of being trans in societies eyes and how having that identity impacts a person and their life.
Written by Katlyn Marion
November 30, 2020.