News and Events => Arts & Entertainment News => Topic started by: Shana A on October 12, 2012, 08:34:21 AM Return to Full Version
Title: A new kind of hero: Cronn-Mills' latest book features a transsexual protagonist
Post by: Shana A on October 12, 2012, 08:34:21 AM
Post by: Shana A on October 12, 2012, 08:34:21 AM
October 11, 2012
A new kind of hero: Cronn-Mills' latest book features a transsexual protagonist
By Tanner Kent The Free Press
http://mankatofreepress.com/features/x699421478/A-new-kind-of-hero-Cronn-Mills-latest-book-features-a-transsexual-protagonist (http://mankatofreepress.com/features/x699421478/A-new-kind-of-hero-Cronn-Mills-latest-book-features-a-transsexual-protagonist)
MANKATO — Kirstin Cronn-Mills has already been asked the question.
Yes, she believes a straight woman can write a convincing story about a transsexual man.
"If people give me the attention because I'm straight and white," Cronn-Mills said, "then I want to step aside and make space for other people to tell their stories."
The Mankato author whose first novel for young adults, "The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don't Mind," was published in 2009 and was a 2010 finalist for the Minnesota Book Award for Young People's Literature, is also an English instructor at South Central College. She's inclined to approach her writing with a certain academic weight and said the subject matter for her latest novel, "Beautiful Music for Ugly Children," was not chosen lightly.
She thinks about her responsibility as a writer partly in terms of privilege. She being the white, educated, relatively affluent female should consider using her privileged standing in society to empower more marginalized populations.
And, as Cronn-Mills notes, young adult literature is "not the world's best place for diversity."
A new kind of hero: Cronn-Mills' latest book features a transsexual protagonist
By Tanner Kent The Free Press
http://mankatofreepress.com/features/x699421478/A-new-kind-of-hero-Cronn-Mills-latest-book-features-a-transsexual-protagonist (http://mankatofreepress.com/features/x699421478/A-new-kind-of-hero-Cronn-Mills-latest-book-features-a-transsexual-protagonist)
MANKATO — Kirstin Cronn-Mills has already been asked the question.
Yes, she believes a straight woman can write a convincing story about a transsexual man.
"If people give me the attention because I'm straight and white," Cronn-Mills said, "then I want to step aside and make space for other people to tell their stories."
The Mankato author whose first novel for young adults, "The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don't Mind," was published in 2009 and was a 2010 finalist for the Minnesota Book Award for Young People's Literature, is also an English instructor at South Central College. She's inclined to approach her writing with a certain academic weight and said the subject matter for her latest novel, "Beautiful Music for Ugly Children," was not chosen lightly.
She thinks about her responsibility as a writer partly in terms of privilege. She being the white, educated, relatively affluent female should consider using her privileged standing in society to empower more marginalized populations.
And, as Cronn-Mills notes, young adult literature is "not the world's best place for diversity."