Some Animal

“When she becomes he, people are confused, some are even angry,” writes Shipley (Boy with Flowers) in this riveting exploration of what it means to come of age in a genderqueer body. The collection’s four linked memoirs adopt a ranging, hybrid form. Though steeped in Anglo-American poetry and literary theory, the book’s first order of business is making sense of how it feels to be “all alone inside// a riddle.” Shipley’s sources are those of contemporary autobiography: visceral memories of sex and sex ed (“The classroom quiet. Rapt. Wrapped in gauze”), portentous dreams (“Pale bodies in S shapes slither and glide, slick over water-skin”), unshakeable pronouncements from family members (“Grandma lets out a long sigh, ‘Well, then, if you’re a boy,/ let’s see your penis’ ”). What sets this book apart is its focused attention to the experience of defying the gender binary, of being in a body that intimates and strangers alike are bent on denying. “That’s not a girl, that’s a boy,” classmates say, in one dreamscape. “Oh. No, wait: what is it?” Mining his own life and those of his queer kin, Shipley’s book is one of hard truths, lovingly rendered. (Apr.)