Author Julie Gilbert Discusses the Writing of Her New Book ‘Giant Love’
Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
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This is a story that ends with my name and begins, I’m sorry to say, on TikTok. In early 2020, I was spending a lot of time on my phone. This was a sweet if scary time in my life: I’d finished my MFA and my agent had just sold my first novel. All my talent and potential would soon be measured against reality. Of course, I melted into Tik Tok. At the time, the app was unique for the freakishly sensitive algorithm that curated the so-called “for you” page. Very quickly, mine was filled with newly-out adult women who’d spent their whole lives assuming they were straight. How weird for this to end up on my fyp , I thought to myself. Me! A straight woman. Almost immediately, my scrolling began to yield videos of women explaining how “weird” they had found it that their fyp began centering newly-out lesbians until—surprise!—they themselves came out as queer. That spring, I celebrated my first pandemic Passover in isolation with my latest boyfriend. He was a good person. Most of my boyfriends had been. Whatever grief and resentment welled up in me, I’d always thought that was love. For weeks, this boyfriend was the only person I touched, the only person I sat on a couch to read with, the only person I watched TV with. The more I wrote, the more I suspect that the words are not the truth, but they can point us toward the truth. By summer, I had come out as gay. * Everyone was confused. My life had many cool and kind queer people, all of whom were happy for me but a little taken aback. “Do you have someone?” they asked, incredulous. I wished I did have a girlfriend to hide behind. It would be so much simpler to tell a love story, a story of being seduced, flipped. But I was telling a more abstract story involving language. On Tik Tok, I had learned new words that began to peel apart my previously held conflations of genitalia with gender with presentation with orientation. […]
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Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
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