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By Tucson, it was Therese who felt like a costume. How real was a person if you could shed her in a thousand miles?”
This quote occurs in Chapter Five, as Reese travels from El Paso to Los Angeles, shedding the trappings of the female identity he was born into and changing his appearance to look like the man he is. As he travels, he cuts his hair with a hunting knife, changes his clothing to adopt more traditionally masculine-coded items, and binds his chest. In the process of moving across the country, away from the family that harmed and rejected him, Reese’s physical transformation reflects a deeper change. As he gets further from home, he sees how ephemeral his female identity is, likening the change to shedding a costume. Reese frees himself from an identity that never felt like his and inhabits an identity that does, emphasizing how liberating and affirming the process of reinvention is for him.
At first, passing seemed so simple, she couldn’t understand why her parents hadn’t done it. But she was young then. She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.
This quote takes place in Chapter Eight, as Stella and Loretta spend time together for the first time and Stella reflects on how much easier her life would have been if her parents had tried to pass for white from the beginning. As she talks to Loretta, one of the only other Black people in her world, Stella feels poignantly how much she misses her family and how much she wishes that her father were alive and that they were all living as white together. Instead, Stella finds herself existing in a state of self-imposed loneliness, alone because no one around her knows who she really is. She can’t find belonging with Loretta, though she longs for the friendship of another Black woman, because she fears that Loretta will reveal her identity. Because the white world isn’t truly meant for her and she fears the Black world, Stella constantly feels outside of both worlds because of her passing.
Went to find myself, she wrote. I’m safe. Don’t worry about me.
The language bothered Stella most of all. You didn’t just find a self out there waiting—you had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.
This quote occurs in Chapter Sixteen after Kennedy has left the country in the wake of discovering that Stella, her mother, had always been lying to her about her race. Kennedy writes a postcard to let her parents know she’s safe, but Stella is upset by the language she uses. Though Kennedy claims to be finding herself, Stella has an entirely different perspective on identity, since she has done everything in her power to reinvent herself. As someone who decided who she wanted to be and then created herself out of that idea, almost like an actor deciding what role she was going to play, Stella struggles to understand her daughter’s belief in a more intrinsic identity. Though many parents would applaud their children for seeking out their true identity, Stella, after a lifetime of living a double life, no longer believes in intrinsic identity at all, only in self-creation.
