My only note, if anything, is that I wish Ana got to take all those deeply internal thoughts about gender and put them into conversation outside of the coming out scenes. So Ana is wondering if she can disassociate from her performance in that way, but also questioning where to draw the line between acting and expressing, both on and off the ice.
And that's exactly how gender works as well. There's this idea that when you get on the ice, you're "portraying a character," and then the more you lean into that role, the higher points you receive. When she realizes that her body and her personhood doesn't tell the story she always thought it would, that's huge for her.Īnother aspect I love about the story is how it parallels skating performance against gender performance. When Ana meets Hayden and realizes that it's possible for people to change their names and pronouns, she become fascinated by the implications of that and begins making space for herself to experiment with different expressions. These questions occur naturally in the story, which makes sense for a character so strongly questioning their gender. So why do we all put so much stock in "boy things" versus "girl things" when there are literally no rules? Ana is realizing that, yes, there are boys who like to sew and craft just like there are girls who love sports and video games. It doesn't mean "girly" things are bad or that they're not a part of her in some ways, it just means they don't define her. There's also a nuanced distinction about how Ana doesn't "hate" femininity, she just doesn't claim femininity for herself. She doesn't have the vocabulary to describe it, she doesn't know about labels or inclusive terminology, she doesn't know where to begin questioning it, but she knows enough to know that femininity doesn't quite fit.
Ana's questioning of her gender is shown so organically, whether it be the mental double-take she does when her mom full-names her, or the way she hates wearing skirts during practice, or how she's intimidated by other skaters' ease in showcasing their femininity.
This is a masterfully told story of self-discovery on and off the ice. (First of all, Ana is trying out multiple pronouns by the end of this story, she/her being some of them, and those are what I'll be using to refer to her in this review.) It's overwhelming to think about how this story is going to affirm so many things for so many young readers, in ways we can't even imagine. Rep: Ana is non-binary, Chinese-American (with possibly some Hawaiian heritage as well), and Jewish CWs: Misgendering, misnaming, allusions to transphobia and bullying, and contains multiple coming out scenes
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