I’m sharing this w/o the Amazon link because I’m currently boycotting in the spirit of national resentment, if not strong logic. But I am most grateful to Stephan Nance for this lovely review of The Fashion Committee! As I’ve mentioned a few times (cough, cough) the book is just out in paperback and I’d be very happy if people wanted to buy it and read it. Available at your indie bookstore and Chapters-Indigo and all the rest of the many places that I’m not boycotting.
Stephan first wrote to me ten years ago. Stephan is ridiculously charming and talented and I’m glad to see them still doing their brilliant thing and touring all over the world. Below I posted a link to one of their first videos. It’s a genuine honour to get the good word from you, Stephan. xo
(Full disclosure: Susan Juby is my favorite living writer. Her books have been inspiring me and brightening my life since 2004. She is one of my heroes.) (I wrote this review for Goodreads and Amazon, which is why I last-name you throughout, Susan.)
If you are looking for a fluffy, soulless beach read, move right along. You might have been misled by the conventionally attractive, skinny, blonde, white model who poses on the book’s cover. But conventional characters are scarce in Juby’s books, and they certainly aren’t given the spotlight. Juby writes about oddballs, outcasts, misfits — characters who are lovable but flawed and complicated. And while the tagline misrepresents the book as perpetuating gender stereotypes (pitting “one style-obsessed girl” against “one fashion-phobic guy”), Juby in fact constantly challenges norms of all sorts — and does so with remarkable subtlety and nuance. Her writing is lively, funny, humane, and inclusive. It is this inclusiveness that I especially want to draw attention to, at the expense of any discussion of the book’s plot. (Suffice it to say that it was compelling, thoughtful, bittersweet, and just so much fun.)
Juby’s most recent books (Republic of Dirt, The Truth Commission, and The Fashion Committee) are increasingly excellent examples of how white authors can write books that are color-conscious, as well as diverse in terms of gender, sexuality, ability, size, etc. Juby does not try to speak for people of color and write from their perspectives, but she also does not write as if she were colorblind. Thus, her protagonists are white, but their whiteness is not taken for granted — it is named, and other white characters’ whiteness is mentioned as well (“a very young white man” rather than “a very young man,” for example). This may seem like a small detail, but acknowledging that white people “have” race is one way of disrupting white supremacy (in the more academic sense, not in the hate group sense).
I was particularly impressed by Juby’s use of intertextuality to diversify The Fashion Committee. Throughout the book, she sprinkles references to artists of color and their work, for example A Tribe Called Red (a First Nations music group) and Moonshot (a collection of Indigenous comics). In so doing, she decenters whiteness in her own work, and promotes artists of color to her readers.
Personally, I felt (happily, surprisingly) represented as a non-binary person when one of Charlie Dean’s trademark fashion tips acknowledged her potential gender nonconforming readers, and when they/them pronouns were used for an androgynous model. The book was also just queerer overall than I was expecting (and it’s done so fantastically — but I’m not going to spoil it for you).
As always with Juby’s books, The Fashion Committee left me feeling inspired — not only to create, but to keep fighting and to stay true to myself. And as for the story that sparked those feelings of inspiration — I’ll leave it for you to read and find out for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQGxqcz-rw4)
