Thursday: Sharing Our Voices
One of the things I’ve realized in the past couple of weeks since my book launch for Life B is that people are hungry for opportunities to share stories (as I wrote about in an older post).
Yesterday I had the honor of participating in the Diane Rehm Book Club on WAMU; the May title was Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. The other two panelists were Miwa Messer, editorial director at Barnes & Noble and host of their “Poured Over” podcast; and Aidan Key, founder of TransFamilies and author of Trans Children in Today’s Schools.
Diane — who needs no introduction! — encouraged us, before the program began, to keep things as conversational and natural as possible. I’m so glad she reminded us of that, because once the four of us started to discuss Picoult and Boylan’s beautiful and timely novel, we had a great deal to share and not just about the book. We shared convictions and observations and feelings and stories. We went back and forth from scenes and characters in the book to what we know and don’t know about trans people in real life.
As it happened, I’d been on a video call with Jodi Picoult earlier in the day, for a completely different reason (to hear her thoughts on book banning for my podcast, “Missing Pages”). When we talked about Mad Honey and how it might soon join the many Picoult titles that are already on lists of banned books, Jodi shared something that I found important. “When we started this collaboration, I told Jenny that I was going to wind up asking a lot of stupid questions,” she said. “And I did. And she answered them. Asking questions is the only way to learn about people whose lives are different than ours.”
Asking questions is also far better than making assumptions, but make sure you’re asking someone you know well and care about and not simply being intrusive. Trans people are not objects for your amusement and prurient interest; they’re human beings. As Aidan said during our conversation, he’d much rather talk to people of any gender about things in common, like movies and foods and hobbies, than about his genitalia and sex life.
We should share our stories, when it’s appropriate for us to share. Otherwise, we have books on every subject under the sun with which to educate ourselves so we approach other human beings with care and compassion.