“I’m no longer sure which is worse: surviving and living the rest of my life as a lie, or wasting away in this apartment and dying from this cancer,” (Maylott 35).
Paige Maylott’s debut memoir is an honest exploration of transition and discovery. Finding solace, community, and love in online communities and games, Maylott comes into her identity as a transwoman. Detailing divorce, a terrifying cancer diagnosis, Maylott’s trans journey gives a genuine and sincere look into her life that many reader’s will see themselves in.
My Body Is Distant has been on my hype list for so long that I can’t even properly describe how happy I am that this book finally exists in Real Life and virtually through digital copies! Maylott is a knockout writer, her descriptions of the virtual worlds of WAR, Second Life, and some sample DMing of a DnD campaign put reader’s right into these fantastical worlds. We can feel Maylott’s own shock when she gets pulled out of the comforts of these virtual worlds and has to real with the reality of Real Life. To echo another reviewer, I really hope we get a fantasy book from her in the future!
Maylott excellently weaves three stories about her relationship to her body together: her virtual bodies through avatars, her diagnosis and treatment with colorectal cancer, and travelling to California to receive GRS. The way Maylott works with this theme is truly brilliant, all of the ways that her body has been distant and the ways it becomes close. From finding joy and solace as a child playing the computer game Zork, creating avatars on furry and BDSM chatrooms and finding romance and love in that body, to a cancer diagnosis and finding the changes of her body that came with treatment, to GRS and more physical changes that come with the reality of that surgery. It’s honest, vulnerable, and a real reflection of the complicated relationship with her body.
The chapters of Maylott’s memoir alternate from that of exploring virtual bodies, her body during and after cancer treatment, and her body as she prepares for GRS, jumping from different pasts and presents so that reader’s know certain things in Maylott’s life that are coming as the pieces bit by bit come together to reveal the whole picture. And it isn’t always pretty. There’s infidelity, the issue of passing, the blending of online relationships to Real Life ones and the complications that can arise from that. But Maylott isn’t afraid to show readers herself and all the twists and turns her life took to get her to where she is today.
A modern trans coming-of-age story, My Body Is Distant is a necessary book for your shelf. Filled with heart, love, and achingly honest, this is a memoir you don’t want to miss!
Publication: September 19th 2023
Publisher: ECW Press
Pages: 296 pages (Paperback)
Source: Owned
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Canadian, LBTBQ+
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
An electrifying and vulnerable memoir that invites readers into an intimate conversation about our digital and physical selves, gender, and belonging. In My Body Is Distant, Paige Maylott writes about her life ― both virtual and IRL ― as she explores her authentic self and sexuality through dream-like virtual worlds. While Paige dances in online BDSM clubs and hurls spells on virtual battlefields, she is swept into a fairy tale romance that pushes her into discovery. How can she transcend her carefully curated computer universe and manifest that happiness in the real world? As she discovers the person she is meant to be, Paige contends with a cancer diagnosis and an imploding marriage while struggling to convert an online love story into reality. When a humiliation at work provides the necessary push to transition, Paige finds the freedom to explore her new self. Part trans woman’s coming-out story and part heartfelt romance, My Body Is Distant follows Paige from a childhood obsession with the 1980s game Zork , through a health crisis and divorce, to, ultimately, an affirmation of authenticity and self-love.
Sarah O'Connor 