Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir

ISBN: 1419773186

Author: Bossiere, Zo�

Condition: New

Named one of the Best Memoirs of the Year by EsquireNamed one of the Best Books of the Year by Shelf AwarenessNamed a Southwest Book of the YearA striking literary memoir of genderfluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the authors experience coming of age in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park.Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zos world is one of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled paloverde trees. With the familys move to Cactus Country RV Park, Zo has been given a fresh start and a new, shorter haircut.Although Zo doesnt have the words to express it, he experiences life as a trans boy-and in Cactus Country, others begin to see him as a boy, too. Here, Zo spends hot days chasing shade and freight trains with an ever-rotating pack of sunburned desert kids, and nights fending off his own questions about the body underneath his baggy clothes.As Zo enters adolescence, he must reckon with the sexism, racism, substance abuse, and violence endemic to the working class Cactus Country men hes grown close to, whose hard masculinity seems as embedded in the desert landscape as the cacti sprouting from parched earth. In response, Zo adopts an androgynous style and new pronouns, but still cannot escape what it means to live in a gendered body, particularly when a fraught first love destabilizes their sense of self.But beauty flowers in this desert, too. Zo persists in searching for answers that cant be found in Cactus Country, dreaming of a day they might leave the park behind to embrace whatever awaits beyond.Equal parts harsh and tender, Cactus Country is an invitation for readers to consider how we find our place in a world that insists on stark binaries, and a precisely rendered journey of self-determination that will resonate with anyone whos ever had to fight to be themself.

• Esquire's Best Memoirs of the Year: Includes Cactus Country | Shelf Awareness' Top Books: Features Cactus Country | Cactus Country: A Southwest Book of the Year