The exact events of the story are – as its subtitle suggests – confabulous, meaning it fills in gaps in the details with fabricated facts and experiences. “Fierce Femmes”, while labeled as a memoir, smudges the line between truth and fiction beyond recognition. There’s alchemy in the way she takes these women’s shared pain and turns it to gold, a collective healing that takes place once they find and support one another through the events of the novel. Despite their desperate circumstances, she’s overjoyed to be surrounded by women who understand her – and that emotion is incredibly understandable, with the way Thom renders them in fairytale prose. Thom’s action is hair-raising and cathartic, which serves the story she’s telling well.Īfter the titular fierce femme leaves her childhood home for the “City of Smoke and Lights”, she finds family in mentors like Kimaya and Rapunzelle who help her get a shoebox apartment and a shady doctor. This book bucks all stereotypes of a transfeminine victimization narrative: when the main character is tailed at a bus stop, for example, she beats the snot out of the creep with martial arts mastery, and every subsequent fight scene matches it for power and tension. Even so, I found it more of a healing book than a hurting one. Readers may want to be careful around Thom’s descriptions of assault, police brutality and self-harm. The story doesn’t pull punches on discussions of trauma and violence.
“A spark jumped from my lips, skipped off my palm, and darted…The screen exploded in a glorious symphony of electricity and shattering glass, and a thousand razor shards flew through the air and turned into crimson butterflies that danced through the room on their way out the window.”
“Instead of kicking, I blew a kiss at the TV,” the novel’s unnamed narrator recounts. Every sentence feels like a Baz Luhrmann blockbuster or the Harley Quinn dream sequence from “The Suicide Squad”, with descriptions leaping off the page to pull you into their fantastical world. “Fierce Femmes” follows a young, first-generation Chinese-American girl’s journey of self-discovery and recovery with glittering prose. However, “Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir” is far from a typical story. Running away from home, reinventing yourself and encountering roadblocks along the way – it’s a typical structure for a typical coming-of-age novel.
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