By: Creatrix Tiara

OK SO the last time Bright Lines got mentioned on Autostraddle someone in the comments was all “I wonder what Tiara thinks!!”. This was years ago but I finally have an answer for you, commenter from yonks ago.

I found the book frustrating.

Mostly I found it frustrating how people were so chill about Ella’s gender presentation in Bangladesh. She goes around wearing her dad’s clothes and no one gives a damn. Whenever I go to Bangladesh the moment I wear jeans and a femme-ish kurta top instead of a salwhar khameez I get “are you a BOY or a GIRL”. My DAD gets on my case about “looking like a boy” when my hair is super short. And with Ella it’s a shrug?

That’s what frustrates me about novels like these: they sell you on “at least we’re MORE relatable than those other books by outsiders” and yet their unrelatability is even more striking. I get that I’m a weird edge case (how many books about Bangladeshi Malaysians with tenuous connections to either culture do you know?) but at least the others don’t pretend to know me better than anyone else yknow? So I’m worried about reading any of the other books on the list lest I feel let down again, or feel even more outsidery because “well clearly you’d know this reference if you were REALLY Desi”.

Sorry to be a downer. Does anyone else feel the same way as me in general?