Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir

This is a memoir of genderfluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author’s coming-of-age experience in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park. We start with meeting eleven-year-old Zoë, newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, as he experiences life as a trans boy. With the family’s move to Cactus Country RV Park, he receives a fresh start and a new haircut. Zoë spends his days chasing shade and freight trains with desert kids and his nights questioning his body.

As he enters adolescence, he confronts the sexism, racism, substance abuse, and violence endemic to the working-class men he’s grown close to. In response, he adopts an androgynous style and new pronouns, but still struggles with his gendered body, especially when a fraught first love destabilizes his sense of self. Despite the hardships, love and beauty bloom in the desert. 

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