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A review by hollowspine
Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff
4.0
A touching and interesting story, mainly about the summer love between Kid and Scout two street kids who share a love of music, mysterious circumstances and the desire to share something that might last longer than summer.
Brezenoff never reveals the gender of Kid and in the beginning of the story neither Scout nor Kid is immediately distinguished with a gender signifier, which I found interesting. That first chapter was appealing to me because it allowed the characters to develop without me being able to immediately peg them as the love-interests of the story. All the characters are given complex and interesting personalities, not one of them would be easy to label, which is another awesome thing about Brezenoff's writing.
All in all, I really enjoyed the book and even though I was a little bit curious by the end to know what Kid's gender was, I'm also fine with the fact that I still don't know. I'm glad that Brezenoff didn't reveal in the end, so no one can say something like, I knew all along that Kid was this or that because when this happened Kid did this which...blah blah blah.
I wonder if Brezenoff knows or if Kid didn't even let him know, I wonder how it was for him to create a character with the gender neutral, if it was difficult, if he needed to go through the story trying to get rid of obvious gender stereotypes for people to try to use?
I never decided what gender Kid was, in some parts Kid seems to have what I would consider a more feminine response, but at other times I thought, Kid seemed very typically masculine. In a way I wish that I could be like that. I wish the world could be more gender neutral.
Brezenoff never reveals the gender of Kid and in the beginning of the story neither Scout nor Kid is immediately distinguished with a gender signifier, which I found interesting. That first chapter was appealing to me because it allowed the characters to develop without me being able to immediately peg them as the love-interests of the story. All the characters are given complex and interesting personalities, not one of them would be easy to label, which is another awesome thing about Brezenoff's writing.
All in all, I really enjoyed the book and even though I was a little bit curious by the end to know what Kid's gender was, I'm also fine with the fact that I still don't know. I'm glad that Brezenoff didn't reveal in the end, so no one can say something like, I knew all along that Kid was this or that because when this happened Kid did this which...blah blah blah.
I wonder if Brezenoff knows or if Kid didn't even let him know, I wonder how it was for him to create a character with the gender neutral, if it was difficult, if he needed to go through the story trying to get rid of obvious gender stereotypes for people to try to use?
I never decided what gender Kid was, in some parts Kid seems to have what I would consider a more feminine response, but at other times I thought, Kid seemed very typically masculine. In a way I wish that I could be like that. I wish the world could be more gender neutral.