I feel pretty confident that this first book by Seattle-based Kim Fu will be the only novel you read this year with an Oriental-Canadian trans-sexual protagonist.
Peter is the third child of Chinese immigrants. He's born a boy, but yearns to be a girl.
His domineering father, "a small man who stands tall in people's minds", wants the family to be as completely Canadian as possible and as fast as possible. Cantonese language, customs and cuisine are forbidden. Even the white fungus soup is flung out on to the lawn, and replaced by split pea and ham. The four children are forced into new concepts of identity. In Peter's case, it's a quest compounded by his utter conviction that he's a prisoner inside the wrong gender.
He spends his childhood in 1970s Ontario, in "an awkward, middle-sized town". Asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he instantly replies "a mommy". He knows that his real body waits for him somewhere else, and it's like his sisters' bodies. The thought of remaining a boy makes him weep.
He moves away to Montreal, where we hear a lot about restaurants and high-risk sexual activity. He starts to shape himself, physically and psychologically. He has affairs with a domineering older lover and a self-punishing Christian lesbian who puts sex on the same level as voting or cleaning your teeth.
