Interview with Meredith Russo, the author of *If I Were Your Girl*. This young adult novel tells part of her story as a trans teenager. It received several awards and was chosen as "one of the 50 books every teenager should read." Here's a preview of the first chapter. By Lala Toutonian. Photos: Anthony Travis and Chris Anderson (Courtesy of Edhasa). Meredith Russo began living her identity as a trans woman in 2003. In * If I Were Your Girl* , a young adult novel published by Edhasa, she recounts part of her personal journey. She does so through the protagonist, Amanda Hardly, a trans girl who moves to a small town in Tennessee (in the southern United States), where she faces the challenges of gender identity and the search for love. She tells it with raw honesty, sensitivity, and the courage of noblewomen. If I Were Your Girl garnered numerous awards, including the Stonewall Prize for LGBT Literature, the Walter Dean Myers Prize, iBooks' YA Novel of the Year, and was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Amazon. It was also chosen by Flavorwire as one of the 50 books every teenager should read. From Tennessee—where she grew up and lives with her son—Meredith spoke with Presentes about LGBT activism and literature. —Everyone knows what they're good at, and yours turned out to be writing. Do you consider it your activism? —Activism is in everything. What's truly important to me is that it was through writing and the desire to change the world that all of this came about. But there's something I find in all writers, and that's that there's something broken, something very crazy that cultivates imaginary friends, and we need to put them on paper. I think that beyond activism, like all writers, I'm channeling some form of madness.

“Everyone is worried about which bathrooms gays, trans people and lesbians go to.”

— How do you see the trajectory of the LGBT movement? "There's still a long way to go, girl, but the LGBT movement is more visible today than it was a few years ago. And rights that were previously unthinkable have been won. Knowledge about the issue is spreading, which can also be dangerous. I think many trans people in the United States would agree with me." We've been using the toilets without any problems for years, but now the conservatives are going crazy because they can't bother us about it. Now everyone is worried about which restrooms trans people, gay men, and lesbians use… Some time ago, Meredith Russo was invited by the New York Times to write about trans people's use of restrooms and the new law regarding public restroom use. The article was titled “What does it feel like to use the wrong bathroom?In that text, the writer recounted how a former boss asked her if she had had plastic surgery; and when Meredith denied it, he demanded she use the men's restroom. “I went to the men's restroom, where I waited for the only stall to become available. I thought about doing it punk-rock style: lifting my skirt and using the urinal, and then telling off any man who looked at me strangely.” Fuck you. But There is surely no being more docile on Earth than a woman who has just completed her transition”, he wrote in that column. — How do they experience their achievements today? — We're more visible, and generally speaking, that's better. But with Trump, there's a latent danger that all the progress we've made will be undone. Just today I read about the situation in Chechnya, where they've opened veritable concentration camps for homosexuals. We live in a world where the right wing has come to power, including in the United States, which is frightening. But I trust that the next LGBT generation will be able to freely live out all our achievementsMy opinion of Trump? Ugh, no, he's orange and he's horrible, he's a monster and a national disgrace. I didn't vote for him; I was out of the country that day and without my son, because otherwise I would have sought asylum. If you know of anyone who can take us in, let me know, because it's awful here. —Middlesex, the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides (author of The Young Suicides, adapted into a film by Sofia Coppola), tells the story of Cal Stephanides, who, after a childhood as a boy, discovers another kind of identity. I think it's one of the great novels of recent years. Have you read it? —I read it when I was fifteen, and it was very important to me. Today, with a more mature perspective, I understand that it's a very harsh book about trans people. But it was a novel that allowed me to see that through Cal's life, there was a possibility of transition. — How does the impact of this first novel affect you? "My life has completely changed: I have more time for naps, especially now that I'm a mother. Before, in addition to working almost twelve hours a day at a call center, I received a subsidy. Now I'm more relaxed, enjoying my son. I've also made new friends and strengthened old ones. It took me a year and a half to write this novel, but back then I was working while also being a mom." — Any plans for a new book? Are you going to continue with this theme? — I'm writing another book, BirthdayI hope it gets translated into Spanish. It's about two teenagers: one queer, the other not. They were born on the same day and meet when they turn thirteen, although the story spans from when they were seven until they were twenty. Spoiler alert: it's a love story between them.

Read the first chapter of If I Were Your Girl .

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