Hello,
Who is your favorite transgender character?
Personally, my favorite is Oshima (a transgender man), from Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore." Transgender issues are not central to this novel, but rather what Murakami does, as he also did in his novel "Norwegian Wood" (my favorite novel of all time), is to take a person with what many see as a strange sexual proclivity, and have them act as a guide, who helps lead the narrator on a path that heals the narrator's suffering, and in the process, paints the guide with a very rich and human palette.
Oshima is shown as someone of extraordinary depth and intelligence. He has gone through suffering and confusion, but he has mostly made peace with himself and now his past suffering acts as an impetus to empathize and to be compassionate to others. Here is an excerpt from a dialogue between Oshima and Kafka, the narrator;
(Kafka) "I don't care what you are. Whatever you are, I like you," I tell him. I've never said this to anybody in my whole life, and the words make me blush.
(Oshima) "I appreciate it," Oshima says, and lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I know I am a little different from everyone else, but I'm still a human being. That's what I'd like you to realize. I'm just a regular person, not some monster. I feel the same things everyone else does, act the same way. Sometimes, though, that small difference feels like an abyss......."
I haven't even begun to describe this novel's eclectic range, and it's subtle, surreal, but unbelievably heartrending nature. Since I don't want to make this post too long, I'll just end by saying it is one of the handful of novels that undetectably crept into my soul, and then gently pushed aside it's barriers, so that after I read the last word, I unexpectedly began to deeply sob. Afterwards, I couldn't think about anything else for weeks, but the journey I had just been on, and the friends I've made, which I would never meet. I still can't listen to Beethoven's "Archduke Trio," without feeling my heart ache (you'll know what I'm talking about if you read the book!!!).
