Flowers Blooming In Trash (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798234104021)

Once upon a time in suburban Washington DC, a juvenile delinquent closet trans girl has an ache in her heart and a fire in her brain. Desperate to escape her abusive family, chafing against the male skin she was born in, and totally disinterested in being a respectable member of society, she pushes and shoves her way into the sausage party punk scene of the 2000s, hellbent on finding her voice, her people, her place. Instead, she falls down a rabbit hole of smashed guitars, scarred vocal cords, hand-to-mouth squalor and nonstop anti-social hi-jinx. But she persists, guided by an irrational faith that the songs she's screaming are bigger than her. That she is not alone.

Twenty years in, that faith shatters to dust. First her mother dies, forcing a lifetime of pent-up demons to the surface. Then she gives up on her life's work and plummets into a scorched-earth suicidal meltdown. But by some miracle, she claws her way back from the brink and starts transitioning, blossoming into her true self at long last. Meanwhile, the world is catching up to her; people are finally talking about gender, mental health, trauma. Could it be that she was right all along? Is her story more than just her story? She decides to find out by laying it all on the page point blank, risking complete and utter humiliation in the name of truth. The end result is a whirlwind of sadness, madness, dick-and-fart jokes, and the bone-deep conviction that we can all transcend alienation through the power of art.