Melissa Faliveno

Yeah, I'm done with this. Not interesting, not as novel as she thinks she is, too fucking long. One little idea has been pulled like taffy into a thin 35-page essay, over and over.

I read:

"The Finger of God"

"Tomboy" - ok, like, as a fellow bisexual genderqueer butch, I *get* it, but this doesn't even get to the level of a good twitter thread. Stop moping and change your fucking name, your pain and ambivalence isn't that profound.

"Switch-Hitter"

Half of "Meat and Potatoes" - good description of being flogged, but this is impressively boring for being a personal essay about BDSM.… (mais)

Reading TOMBOYLAND was a moving and eye-opening mini-education for me on the subjects of gender identity and sexual orientation. Author Melissa Faliveno, a product of small-town Wisconsin, was my instructor, and, although she's been navigating those treacherous waters for most of her young life, even she admits to a certain amount of confusion about exactly who she is, noting -

"My body is androgynous, both masculine and feminine. My gender expression fluctuates, depending on the day ... Sometimes I call myself a woman. But sometimes I avoid the word ...Uncertainty is hardly unique among those of us born into female bodies, but as my own body moves through the world, it is marked by one common question: 'What are you?' And the honest answer is -I don't really know."

In this memoir-in-essays, Faliveno offers detailed glimpses into a life often marked by this uncertainty, describing her forays into women's competitive sports - softball, roller derby, and weightlifting. And she was good at all of them. She tells of an intense crush on her middle-aged male high school softball coach, an unrequited relationship that made me think of the young actress/singer and the title character in MISTER HOLLAND'S OPUS. Later, in her college years at UW Madison and after, she engages in numerous drunken, promiscuous one-night stands -

"These men were often older, often married, sometimes guys I played slow-pitch with: meaty, midwestern guys who reminded me of my coach."

She also began cutting herself, seeking out pain, until one night she ended up in an ER, being stitched up. She finally saw a therapist who enabled her to unearth a deeply buried memory of being raped at a fraternity party, although she says -

"On the rare occasions I do talk about it, behind only the safest doors, I only ever use the word 'assault.' I've never actually called it what it was. I still can't bring myself to say the word, 'rape,' aloud."

Faliveno also tells of affairs with other women, beginning with a roller derby teammate, noting -

"... it was the first time I understood that love wasn't synonymous with the subjugation of my body - that one's body can exist on an equal plane with the body it loves, rather than be in service to it."

But this isn't just a book about the "queer" or "kink" life. Faliveno also writes about her life growing up in a small town, an only child surrounded by a large extended family. Then she writes about the serial culture shocks of moving to a college town and then, later, to New York. Her first essay, "The Finger of God," takes a look back at an F5 tornado that, in 1984, completely destroyed the neighboring town of Barneveld, and how its residents bore lasting scars. Another essay, "Meat and Potatoes," jarringly intersperses vignettes of food and recipes with tales of the international "kink" scene she experienced while living and traveling with a much older lover.

It was the final essay, "Driftless," which I found most deeply affecting. In it she describes the terrain of her home state, Wisconsin, and its history, how it was taken from the First Nation peoples who first lived there. And she tells us of the mountains, or "monadnocks" of the driftless region -

"The mountains shouldn't be here. They're incongruous, out of place. They're an anomaly, an abnormality, a glitch in the system. They're also beautiful ... they're not quite right. Amid the rest of the landscape, it would seem clear to someone first encountering them that they just don't belong. This is the landscape that made me."

Faliveno continues to struggle with who she is, and where she belongs. She writes ever so eloquently about her own problems with rage, fear, anger, guilt and grief. And manages at the same time to convey that these are the same problems that currently plague our deeply divided country. I cannot help but marvel at the wisdom in these essays, especially from a writer so young. I loved this book, both for its excruciating honesty and for its beautiful writing. Bravo, Ms Faliveno. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (mais)

Everyone have come out of their houses. Some stand in the backyard while most are out front, afforded a better view. Crowded around the sidewalks and even out in the middle of the street. The grocery store has emptied out. Same with the auto shops, barber shops, and gas station convenience stores. All looking west.
There is an unmistakable static electricity in the air. Gets everyone excited, jumpy, but strangely muffled to the point of quiet. The kids aren’t running around, making noise, taking advantage of these heightened moments. They are close by their parents, within arms length. The children–like the adults– are wide-eyed, wild-eyed. Everyone is watching as the menace on the horizon grows in stature and moves closer in their direction. And then…with the flip of a switch…the static electricity is instantly gone and replaced with a stillness one must only realize in death. A vacuum that sucks all of the breath out of your lungs; that make your eyes even wider. The sky turns scary green and the twisting dark cloud has your number. The slightest hint of a breeze makes everyone jump. One raindrop hitting the forehead puts all in motion. The atmosphere rapidly morphs into aggression as all run for cover. Into basements; into shelters; into backrooms; under stairwells; into closets; into ditches. We’re all about to experience a wallop of great magnitude.

This is the memory that I re-lived reading the most excellent essays in Tomboyland. Melissa Faliveno has written eight revelations that each fall somewhere on the Fujita Tornado Damage Scale and I will let you decide which ones are F-1 and which are F-5. Exceedingly courageous, frighteningly vulnerable, expertly crafted, disturbing, funny and nostalgic, and each piece has you wanting to run for cover to avoid the impending wallop.

The timing for this book couldn’t be more immediate. We (Americans) live in a painfully divided time where common sense, common decency and common bonds have all been burned to the ground. When the most poisoned, damage-inflicting, hate-spewing, embarrassment of an American was able to back into the most powerful job in the world. We’ve turned our backs on science, on fairness, on the Golden Rule. We’ve become our own worst enemy. Tomboyland is an American saga, an American confession circa 2020. It is brave and inclusive and generous. It took me right back to my childhood in the heartland of America and it subsequently brought me right around to my adulthood in the city that never sleeps. And it packs a wallop.… (mais)

Melissa Faliveno’s stunning debut essay collection, “Tomboyland,” opens with the F5 tornado that leveled Barneveld, Wisconsin in 1984 and never lets up, touching down again at various moments in Faliveno’s life; her childhood in Mount Horeb; the roller derby in Madison; and a moth-infested apartment in Brooklyn, New York, to name a few. Faliveno examines the nuances of gender identity, sexuality, body image, class systems, power, violence, substance abuse, Midwestern stoicism, depression, self-harm, trauma, community, guns and more. Her essays naturally hold space for anyone who struggles to see themselves reflected in dominant culture, but they’re more broadly relatable, too — and they deliberately draw no conclusions.… (mais)