Back in November of 2022, when Twitter was still known as Twitter, I bookmarked a long thread of living authors to share with students posted by writer Davon Loeb. At the end of the fall semester that year, when I was teaching senior English at City High School, I had a couple days without plans, so I decided to check that thread to find a fun thing to read and analyze for a couple days.
There I found an essay called “The Beetle King,” by Zoë Bossiere (they/she), originally published in The Sun Magazine. It was about growing up in the Cactus Country RV Park on the southeast side of Tucson, and palo verde beetles, and struggling with gender identity. We read it aloud in class over two days. My students analyzed the structure, and one of them drew an amazing comic of the essay. It was so well done that I reached out to Bossiere on Twitter and asked if they’d be interested in seeing the comic. Bossiere responded and let me know that they had actually graduated from City High in 2010, and were overjoyed that students were reading their work. So of course when Bossiere let me know that they had a book coming out, I asked for an advanced reader copy and for an interview.
“Cactus Country” (Abrams Press, forthcoming May 2024) is a collection of semi-chronological essays about Bossiere’s childhood, starting from their family’s move to Tucson when they were 11, to their time at the University of Arizona, and beyond. As a child, Bossiere identified as male, and the essays are an exploration of what it meant to be an adolescent grappling with gender identity, socio-economic status, and the desert itself. It is an engaging read made more so by the fact that as Tucsonans, we can recognize the actual places, and in many cases people, who populate the book. As I told Bossiere in a Zoom interview in February from their home in Oregon, it’s the most authentically Tucson book I’ve ever read; gritty, dusty, spiky, and brightly-colored in the best of ways.
The following is our conversation, edited for clarity:
Bossiere: I can’t tell you how much it meant to me when you reached out on Twitter and said, ‘Hey, I’m teaching this to my high school students.’ And it happened to be the high school that I went to.
Holub: It’s such a Tucson thing too. Because at first I was like, ‘Oh, this essay is amazing.’ Because it’s about everything that is so relatable for my students. The desert environment, the gender struggles — my students just loved it. Then they were so amazed to hear that you had actually gone to City High.
B: Yeah, I had a similar moment where I was like, wow, this is cyclical in a beautiful way. And, I think that time in my life was really hard for a lot of reasons. But City High School was a bright spot for me.
H: What is your favorite essay in the collection? Do you have a favorite?
B: I think that my favorite one is definitely ”The Beetle King.” That one really feels in a lot of ways like the heart of the project, because that was the time when I was figuring out what it meant and what it felt like to be this boy, who I’d always wanted to be. And at the same time to be at this crossroads where I was like, OK, I’m starting to be seen this way, I am starting to feel this way. And yet, there was still a difference. I wasn’t able to embody that completely, because there were still people in my life who saw me as a girl. And that problem expanded to me having realizations about puberty and having realizations about, you know, I love being a boy, but nobody can stay a boy forever. Everybody has to grow up. And for me, what does that mean?
So to me, that essay really is the seed of all of those more complex, interesting, gender questions that come up later in the book.
H: One of the things that I kept thinking about as I was reading the book was how authentically Tucson it is. I don’t think I’ve read anything where I felt so completely, like, ‘Yes, this is where I live!’ A lot of times when Tucson is in books, it’s this romanticized or glorified version; it’s not the true nitty gritty, dusty, dirty, place that it is with the kinds of characters that inhabit the book. And I’m just wondering, was that a conscious effort?
B: I think you only really start to recognize how much you are of a place when you leave it. At least that was my experience. So when I went to grad school in Oregon, suddenly I was with all of these other people who were from all over the country. I was beginning to recognize differences between me and other people and how those differences are because I’m a Tucsonan and because of my experiences, and because of the landscape I grew up in, and the people I grew up around.
I just remember feeling like there was a real distinct feeling to Tucson as a place that when I would describe it to other people who hadn’t been there or weren’t familiar, it was like a different planet. When I would explain something that seemed really normal to me, like just about how, in the summer, it’s so hot that you literally can’t go outside for part of the day, you know, or some of the creatures that were just around and might appear in your house or things like that, and people would just be like, “What?”
Compounding that for me, in my experience of Tucson was the trailer park, because not everybody lives in a trailer in Tucson. So that was an additional layer of people going, “What?”
So when I sat down to write my childhood, the thing that immediately came to mind, the most present thing, was the landscape of the desert, which is this very sharp, very stoic, beautiful, but dangerous place. And out there in the park, I was surrounded by it. There was nothing between me and the Airstream and the desert, except for this little barbed wire fence. That was it. And so, it started there.
Then from there, I started to remember the people that I grew up with, who were themselves almost this embodiment of the desert — beautiful people, amazing people who are at the same time in their way a little sharp, a little stoic, a little dangerous. That’s how I feel like Tucson is as a place. It’s very much a reflection of where it’s located. And so that is the organic way that the book came about.
H: Why memoir for you? And not more of a fictional approach?
B: An honest reason is that I can’t write fiction. I do not possess the necessary talents to write fiction. So much respect to everyone who does write in that genre beautifully. In the book, I talk a little bit about this: I was really into writing stories for a while, when I was in eighth grade. I would try to write these epics about boys who had these insurmountable problems that they had to solve, and there was usually a fantasy element, too. Then I would read them later and just think, this is awful. This is not real. I don’t see anything real in this. And I would rip them up. I don’t have any of those, because I was just so ashamed of them. I just felt like, this is not art, this is not resonant. I don’t know that I would have used that word in eighth grade, but I felt like there was something fake about it.
And so to me, throughout my writing career, memoir, and essay and nonfiction have always seemed like the best way to capture these experiences. Because I find that they’re often so much stranger than fiction could ever be. It’s kind of like that “what?” element I was telling you about earlier. Some of the little stories and stuff, many of which have made it into the book, about the people that I knew, or the things that went on, and Cactus Country, would elicit these just like incredulous “what?” responses from people. I don’t know that I could have made up stories quite like these.
Maybe this is a cliche, but I feel like real life is often just so much weirder than fiction could ever be. At least my fiction. And so, it was never a question for me what genre to write the book; it was always going to be a nonfiction book.
H: How long have you been working on it? What was the process of putting the whole book together from start to finish?
B: I took a long time to start writing this book, a long, long time. My first book project was actually about my parents, who I mention in the book. They were sea lion trainers in a Hungarian circus way back. I always thought that story was really interesting. Throughout grad school, that was what I was working on, predominantly. But whenever I would go and talk to my thesis advisors or bring things in to workshop, the question I got consistently was “this is really interesting, you’ve captured these experiences really well, but where are you?” Over and over again, “what’s your stake in this? Where’s your story?”
I think for a long time, I was writing their story, so that I wouldn’t have to reckon with mine, because whenever I looked back on my youth, it felt so complicated and fraught, and I didn’t really know how to make sense of what I had experienced, or what it meant for me now. And it was only in 2018 or 2019 that I started to, with the encouragement of some friends and family, write about Cactus Country and write about this extremely formative time in my life.
It was in fits and starts because I was making sense of the narratives as I wrote them. I would start with the landscape and the people and little stories would come out of that. And then I would remember something else that was happening in the park at the same time, and they sort of came together.
It was really difficult because I had to relive each of those moments as I was writing them, but at the same time, empowering, because I got to finally categorize and make sense of what was going on and put it all on the page in this story that had a beginning, a middle and an end.
As the writer, you get to decide how you’re portraying these events, you know. So, it felt to me less like, OK, these are things that just happened, and more like, these are things that shaped me in these important ways.
H: Who do you hope will read this collection?
B: When I was growing up, I was a big reader. I loved to read, I loved books. And I was constantly looking for a book with a character like me, who felt like their assigned gender at birth didn’t match who they saw in the mirror, and who they felt they were. I never found that book. I definitely read stories that resonated with me, stories where I was able to take pieces that I needed, but I never really found that story that was like, “Oh yeah, this writer gets it; this character feels like me.”
So my big hope for the book is that it will be the book that someone out there is looking for, that it’ll reach a readership of people who maybe grew up in a really similar way during a really similar time, who didn’t have the words, just like I didn’t have the words, to talk about their experiences; who may pick up this book and say, “Wow, this reminds me a lot of my own journey.”
Or that young people maybe who are experiencing something similar right now will pick it up and say, “I’m going to be OK. Here’s somebody who’s been through this before. Here’s proof that I can be who I am, and I can live a fulfilling life.” I feel like that would be really rewarding, to know that it’s reaching readers like that.
But most of all, what I really hope for the book is that people will read it who are transgender, or gender non-conforming, or gender expansive in some way, and that maybe they’ll be inspired or incentivized to tell their story in whatever way makes sense for them. Not everybody’s a writer, but maybe they write music, or maybe they make art or something like that. I just think it would be so wonderful to see many, many different representations of trans embodiment, trans experience. And if my story in any way nudges somebody to come out and say, “This was my story,” that would be a beautiful thing.
H: As someone who is not trans, and I don’t have that lived experience, it’s so wonderful for me to read about that lived experience. I’ve worked with so many trans students over the years. I have tried to do my best to be an ally and to be supportive, but I don’t have that lived experience. So reading from that perspective really helps me as a reader to understand it on a level that I didn’t before. And it’s also really interesting to think about how far our community has come even in just a short amount of time. A lot more kids are able to feel open and safe in these spaces that we’ve created as a community.
So is there anything that you just really want people to know about the book or about you as they’re reading this?
B: One important thing is just that this is my experience. It’s very of an era, of a time, of a place, of a person, a specific person. So I think there are some maybe universal truths to be taken from that that I’m hoping will resonate with people who are not the same as me. But at the same time, I think it’s really important to remember that this is just one story. And we could really do with more. I think more representation is exactly what we need, especially during this time, where there are just relentless legislative attacks on trans rights and book bans, and all of these people who are trying very hard to curb that kind of representation. My story is not the only story, it’s not the most important story. I would encourage anybody who wants to read my book, or who is interested, to seek out other stories like mine, and not like mine. And just learn more about what the trans community is, and isn’t. That will be the most important way to fight back against all of this scapegoating and all of this antagonism that the community is currently facing.
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