I Read Queer Books

“Both women and men who deviate from the born-this-way model have historically been presumed to be exceptions and weirdos.” … “What is left if we eliminate orientation—or if it changes willy-nilly? Is there anything solid to me at all, anything I can count on?”

From the publisher:

“At age thirty-six, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irrevocably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we’d like to believe.

Like many of us, Wizenberg had long understood sexual orientation as a stable part of ourselves: we’re “born this way.” Suddenly she realized that her story was more complicated. Who was she if something at her very core could change so radically? Wizenberg forges a new path: through separation and divorce, coming out to family and friends, learning to co-parent a young child, and realizing a new vision of love.”

My Review

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I will admit, I came into this book with a great deal of skepticism. A women leaves a successful, apparently loving marriage over a crush with a passing stranger? While having a toddler? And she insists she wasn’t closeted the whole time? Molly Wizenberg had a very hard sell with this book. And yet I left (at least somewhat) convinced.

Molly Wizenberg had it all – a writing career, a loving husband, a healthy toddler, and a successful restaurant. And she walked away. What I struggled with throughout this book, even apart from the queer lens, was does this make her the villain? In chapters of this book, the reader mourns for the ex-husband and for the daughter now split between two homes. You may potentially feel the resentment of someone deciding to leave the stability and reliability many people crave. There were definitely parts of this book where I though to myself “is this book just a way of making herself feel better about this situation?”

While still a skeptic, I think that this book is important in challenging the static born-this-way narrative. Molly grew up in a family of pro-queer activists, loosing an uncle to AIDS. She had significantly more exposure to queerness than many people, even today. And yet she was happily straight, without even an inkling of female crushes into her 30’s. It seems almost too reductive, but Wizenberg puts forth the question “What if our experiences change us?”. What if our joys, traumas, and environments impact not only our personalities but also our sexualities? And what happens when we find ourselves unable to ignore our inner voice?

Molly chose being true to herself, in spite of the hurt it would cause. She made the controversial choice to give her child a happy, divorced mother over a married and emotionally suppressed one. The journey was not without casualties. It was a choice many people have chosen not to make. And in the end I believe she was right to do so.