Endpapers Jennifer by Savran Kelly

这是一个平易近人、以人物为主导的故事，故事发生在2003年的纽约市，讲述的是一位变性人图书保管员因其性别表现、不合适的关系和艺术障碍而感到受困，她发现了一封隐藏了几十年的同性恋情书，并迷上了追踪其作者。

现在是2003年，艺术家道恩-莱维特被困住了。她是一个在大都会博物馆从事保护工作的装订员，她把空闲时间花在城市的街头艺术上，希望有什么东西能激发出灵感。相反，一切看起来都是死胡同。艺术并不是唯一让人感觉不对劲的东西：无论她走到哪里，她的性别认同都与她生活的其他部分发生冲突。她的关系，曾经以共同的同性恋身份为基础，正在分崩离析，因为她的男友Lukas似乎只有在Dawn最男性化的时候才会被她吸引。同时，在工作中，道恩不得不以女性的身份出现，即使在那些不真实的日子里也是如此。无论怎样，她的不同都让人觉得是一种负担。

An accessible, character-driven story set in 2003 New York City about a genderqueer book conservator who feels trapped by her gender presentation, her ill-fitting relationship, and her artistic block, as she discovers a decades-old hidden queer love letter and becomes obsessed with tracking down its author.

It’s 2003, and artist Dawn Levit is stuck. A bookbinder who works in conservation at the Met, she spends her free time scouting the city’s street art, hoping something might spark inspiration. Instead, everything looks like a dead end. And art isn’t the only thing that feels wrong: wherever she turns, her gender identity clashes with the rest of her life. Her relationship, once anchored by shared queerness, is falling apart as her boyfriend Lukas increasingly seems to be attracted to Dawn only when she’s at her most masculine. Meanwhile at work, Dawn has to present as female, even on the days when that isn’t true. Either way, her difference feels like a liability.  

Then, one day at work, Dawn finds something hidden behind the endpaper of an old book: the torn-off cover of a ‘50s lesbian pulp novel, Turn Her About. On the front is a campy illustration of a woman looking into a handheld mirror and seeing a man’s face. And on the back is a love letter.  

Dawn latches onto the coincidence, becoming obsessed with tracking down the note’s author. Her fixation only increases when her best friend Jae is injured in a hate crime, for which Dawn feels responsible. As Dawn searches for the letter’s author, she is also looking for herself. She tries to understand how to live in a world that doesn’t see her as she truly is, how to get unstuck in her gender, and how to rediscover her art, and she can’t shake the feeling that the note’s author might be able to help guide her to the answers. 

A sharply written, deeply evocative story about what it means to live authentically—even within an identity whose parameters have not yet been defined—Endpapers will appeal to readers of queer, nonbinary, or trans fiction like Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby as well as anyone who loves character-driven, setting-rich stories like Tell the Wolves I’m Home or The Immortalists.