A review by metafiktion
Girlfag: A Life Told in Sex and Musicals by Janet W. Hardy

3.0

I liked that this was an autobiographical, mostly chronological collection of stories and thoughts that have shaped Hardy’s identities rather than a theoretical construction of what “girlfag” means; admittedly, being only passably familiar with her name before this, I was on guard in case it turned out to be a story by a poly, kinky, but still cishet woman trying to ~queer~ her life (it’s not). I was struck by how little I related to Hardy, a “female-bodied person who loves and identifies with gay men,” even as many of our experiences and experiments (e.g. with female masculinity) are adjacent to each other. This is testament to the boundless possibilities under the banner of “queer” as well as the power of a well-written memoir to bring you into a world that is not your own.