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Behind the Book E s s ay b y A l e x M y e r s
A trail-blazing ancestor
T
here were many things I liked about my Grandmother Puffer’s home: cartoons on television, Cheerios for breakfast and all manner of ancestral relics. But the best treasures were her stories.
the title of your new book? Q: What’s
would you describe the book Q: How in one sentence?
ou explain that being bien dans sa peau (comfortable in Q: Yone’s skin) is the best plan for aging. What are some small steps women can take to begin achieving that outlook?
© LEXI ADAMS-WOLFF
Every April, on Patriot’s Day, we’d Deborah. And I counseled myself: go to see the re-enactment of the This is Deborah’s story, not your battles of Lexington and Concord, story. I wanted to let her character and, once back at my grandmother’s emerge fully, without bearing the house, I could count on her to tell imprint of my own. Yet, so often as I our ancestor Deborah’s story. “Can wrote, I thought—she would have you imagine? She so wanted to join worried about using the bathroom the army that she . . . she would have ran away and put glowed when on men’s clothes. someone called I guess she had her “young man” watched boys . . . just like me. her age go off to There were many be soldiers and times when I felt wanted a chance that point of to serve. But can contact through you imagine?” the page. I could. I was 6 There were, or 7 or 8, a little however, just girl. But even then as many spots ALEX MYERS I knew that wasn’t where our stories exactly who or what I was. And I diverged. I wish I could have had could imagine Deborah quite well. Deborah turn west at the end of the I could picture how her skirts and novel; I would have liked nothing apron and lace cap must have felt: better than for her to continue living just like the tights and dress and as a man and to find a little farm pinafore my mother made me wear out in the new Ohio territory, even to birthday parties. I absolutely if that meant living the rest of her knew that Deborah, from her spinlife alone. That’s what I would have ning wheel, had looked at boys in wanted to do. But that isn’t what her town marching off with the milishe did. She went home, to an aunt tia the same way that I looked at my and uncle and to a place that she’d brother when he went racing out the missed. She went home and married door to play with BB guns, while my and had children and became Debofriends brought over Barbies. And I rah again—something I could never was certain that, if the Revolutionimagine doing. Yet, if she had not . . . ary War started up again, it wouldn’t I wouldn’t be able to write her story. take me but half a minute to pull on Born in Paris, Maine, Alex Myers was raised as a some britches and join the army. girl (Alice). He came out as transgender at 17 and That said, it wasn’t until I was 17 earned degrees from Harvard and Brown before years old that I figured out I was studying fiction writing. Revolutionary is the story transgender—to finally say that I of his ancestor, Deborah Samson Gannett, who was a man and would live the rest masqueraded as a man in order to join the Contiof my life as one. I remember that nental Army and fight the British. Myers teaches English at St. George’s School in Washington, D.C., it felt hard: difficult to explain to where he lives with his wife and two cats. people, tough to imagine exactly how I would manage all the legal and personal details. It was unspeakably Revolutionary nice to have Deborah’s story there, By Alex Myers waiting for me. What a comfort to Simon & Schuster know that someone had done this $26, 320 pages before, had crossed this line—done ISBN 9781451663327 it in 1782, well before gender identity eBook available was a concept—and had family that was still proud of her to this day. historical FICTION When I sat down to write Revolutionary, I read my grandmother’s volume of family genealogy and then Alfred Young’s history of
meet MIREILLE GUILIANO
ou say the U.S. is a “youth-obsessed” culture. What’s the biggest Q: Yattitude adjustment Americans should make about aging?
re there pieces of advice in your book that you find particuQ: Alarly difficult to follow?
Q: W hat’s your #1 resolution for the New Year?
Former chief executive of Veuve Clicquot, Mireille Guiliano introduced American readers to the benefits of the French lifestyle in the bestseller French Women Don’t Get Fat. She returns with a look at French strategies toward aging in her new book, French Women Don’t Get Facelifts (Grand Central, $25, 272 pages, ISBN 9781455524112). Guiliano lives in New York City with her husband, Edward, but makes “frequent trips” home to France.
r e a d m o r e at b o o k pa g e . c o m
FRENCH WOMEN DON’T GET FACELIFTS
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