Image: The cover of the book is a black and white photo of a light skinned child blowing bubbles out of the window in the foreground with a snowy hill lined with black silhouettes of people standing or sitting with several people riding sleds down the center. The left side of the cover is a thick, pink margin. Just above the center of the book, across the top, reads "REBENT SINNER" in capital, white letters. Across the bottom is a thick black margin with "IVAN COYOTE" in capitalized pink letters.
Rebent Sinner is Ivan Coyote's memoir/autobiography told through magnificent short stories, essays, and letters. Coyote's skilled story telling made this book more enjoyable than most memoirs and the like that I have read. I cannot think of one that was formatted in the creative and interesting way that this one was, alternating stories that ranged from one sentence to many pages.
Coyote invoked a wide range of emotions in me with this book. There were times I would laugh out loud, times I would be nodding my head, times that my heart hurt, times that I felt understood and met, and many other feelings. Gender and sexuality are obviously large parts of this book given who Ivan Coyote is and the intention conveyed in the book's description. But, Coyote has a way of telling truths without, frankly, making me feel endlessly depressed after reading them. There is a kindness and honesty to their work that allows them to convey the whole picture of what it is like to move through the world as we Queer and trans people do. They capture the daily grind of what it's like for many of us who move through the world as visibly trans and gender non-conforming people.
Coyote holds human beings' complexities at the center of their stories. There is discussion of LGBTQ elders, or lack thereof, throughout some of the stories that reminded me of how few there often are. Coyote and I have a lot of things in common, being cross-stitching non-binary butches who are read in the world in different ways by different people every day. We also have a lot of wonderful differences such as age, residence, and experience. I saw myself in many of their stories and was grateful for the history lessons told through them. I felt that Coyote captured the complexities of generation gaps between LGBTQ people of different ages without falling into ageist tropes against older or younger people.
One thing I truly appreciated about many of Coyote's tellings was the humor brought to each situation. There are countless misgenderings that I related to that Coyote helped me laugh about. We share similar feelings about inevitable ways that people gender us, but they took what can often be anxiety-inducing situations and helped me smile and see them in a different light, or just made them feel less defeating overall. There is something that happens when all of the stories we read about ourselves are of terror and violence. That said, Coyote did not shy away from the realities of when things are truly terrifying such as AIDS crises of the 80's and 90's and trying to navigate abuse or violence in public bathrooms in (big and) small towns. Coyote did not shy away from the discomfort of being on stage in front of largely cishet audiences that they knew were visually dissecting their body piece by piece. I actually learned a lot about the critical need to be patient, intentional, and to take our time when responding to others' well-intentioned ignorance (when possible.)
Coyote also has a lot of social commentary peppered throughout that isn't specifically based in stories of personal experiences. Their discussions of safer spaces, education, bridging generation gaps, changing with times that must change, seeing and being seen help this memoir extend even further outside the boundaries of the genre.
All in all, this was a beautiful and engaging book that was an absolute joy to read. Rebent Sinner is due out in November of 2019 and is definitely worth picking up regardless of the demographics you come from.
This review was also posted to goodreads.
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