Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Zeyn Joukhadar

Quote by Zeyn Joukhadar

“I've tried to block out the awkward years of my puberty, but we've played this same what-if game before, you and me—what if it's just a matter of finding the right haircut, the right outfit, the right boyfriend, the right femininity. Maybe you were right in some way; you never gave in to expectations of what a woman should be.”

Quote by Zeyn Joukhadar

Book:The Thirty Names of Night
Create image

Work

The Thirty Names of Night

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Zeyn Joukhadar

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Zeyn Joukhadar. more

You May Also Like

“My body came with borders. I've lost count of the times I wished I could share in sisterhood, could lay my head on an auntie's lap and know we bore the same weight. But I've borne a different burden, and I've borne it so long that, as I turn the barrette over in my hand, I don't yet have the heart to tell Aisha that I have tried all the ways I can think of to make myself fit in.”

GenderFemininityTransTransmasc
Book:The Thirty Names of Night
Create image

“I have been taught all my life that masculinity means short hair and square-toed shoes, taking up space, raising one's voice. To be soft is to be less of a man. To be gentle, to laugh, to create art, to bleed between the legs—I have been taught all my life that these things make me a woman. I have been taught all my life that to dance is to be vulnerable, and that the world will crush the vulnerable. I was taught to equate invincibility with being worthy of love. But here in the darkness of this abandoned subway platform, I can almost imagine a world big enough for boys like Sami and me to love each other, to dance and let the pain out of our bodies, to breathe and make love and be enough and be enough and be enough.”

LoveGenderMasculinityTransTransmasc
Book:The Thirty Names of Night
Create image

“Go to a chamber and learn to sew! That's what Nature's usage wants of you! You are not Silentius!" and he replied, "I never heard that before! Not Silentius? Who am I then? Silentius is my name, I think, or I am other than who I was. But this I know well, upon my oath, that I cannot be anybody else! Therefore, I am Silentius, as I see it, or I am no one.”

TransgenderGender IdentityMedieval RomanceFrench LiteratureTransmascTransgender Man
Book:Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance
Create image