Grl2grl, by Julie Ann Peters
Peters, Julie Ann (2007). Grl2Grl. Boston: Little, Brown. 160 pages.
Peters’ short story collection features ten character sketches of young women, each of whom claim (or are beginning to claim) sexuality in distinct and (with the exception of the story entitled “Boi”) womanist ways. While the quality of the collection is uneven, Peters refuses to let the brevity of the form compromise her address of some pretty serious issues including incest and abuse. The stories I enjoyed the most were the ones that implied a woman-identified audience and which didn’t introduce the concept of young lesbian life and love as much as presume a sympathetic audience.
Many of the stories emphasized community and its importance–particularly “After Alex,” in which a teen girl tries to get over the dissolution of her first serious relationship, and “TIAD,” comprised primarily of chat logs in a lesbian affirmative chat room. Stories in which a lack of any queer affirmative community was notable–in the case of “Ouside/In,” the obligatory should-I-or-shouldn’t-I-join-the-Gay-Straight-Alliance story and “Boi,” about a F to M trans teen–turned out to prove a need for queer community as well and suggested social action in a subtle way.
There were two things that disappointed me a bit. The first is typical (for me, anyway): I was really hoping for a more sensual collection, in part because I had read an interview with Peters in which she articulated a need for teen lesbian “erotica” and in part because of the sort of sexy cover. Don’t get me wrong, my interest isn’t entirely prurient. Instead, what I was interested in was a collection of relationship stories (love stories, if you will) that, in their entirety–which would include scenes of sensuality–took full advantage of the genre while casting “against type” in a way that would encourage us to think about generic expectations and how these expectations are, in part, culturally shaped. The second concern is something that a student of mine brought up: namely, why is the issue of masculinity not addressed in “Boi” (about the F to M teen) and how does the inclusion of such a story complicate or even contradict the “Grl” focus of the stories?