Told through a kaleidoscopic braid of stories, letters, and riddles, this stunning debut collection follows Xiaomei's life as she grows into her sexuality and searches for a way to deal with her complicated histories.At times, meditation, celebration, investigation, and elegy, this is a book about personal transformation within the context of a family forced to make do—a Makeshift Family—and how one might create new language to name the New World.

    Award-winning authors, spoken-word artists, and new voices come together to challenge conventional ideas of how disability, class, nationality, race, aesthetics, sexual orientation, gender identity and body type intersect with each contributor's concrete notion of femmedom.

    kari's genius moved others to their own words, art, action--following a mandate of reclaiming the very words we speak and write--writing our selves, our other(ed) bodies, into a foundational post-gender post-genre state. This book is the start of what hopefully will be a much longer conversation."--from the introduction by Julian T. Brolaski & erica kaufman.