by C.A. Tanaka
Orca Book Publishers
4/11/2023, paperback
SKU: 9781459835320
Transgender teen Ichiro enters a drag contest in hopes of earning enough money to live off the grid.
Ichiro is a transgender youth in his final year of high school. He has a job as a dishwasher to earn money to help support his single mother. But it's not enough. Ichiro dreams of buying a camper van for the two of them so they can escape and live off the grid and not have to worry about money anymore. A budding drag queen, he takes a second job performing drag at a local club and learns of an upcoming contest where the prize money would be enough to pay for a camper van. But nobody knows he does drag. So when some of his friends find out what he's really doing in the evenings, Ichiro is worried about what they will think of him. Will they still accept him?
Target age: 12 and up
Reviews:
"With contemporary themes, relatable characters, and plenty of high school drama, this title is recommended for high school libraries." -- School Library Journal
About the Author:
C.A. Tanaka is a trans masculine multiracial writer of Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian and Scottish descent. A graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at Simon Fraser University, they have a BFA in intermedia from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design and, in 2017, were awarded a fully funded literary residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. C.A. is the executive director for the Storytelling with Drag Queens Foundation, a local non-profit organization with a mandate to promote diversity and inclusion in literacy for children, teens and adults. They live in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the unceded ancestral homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.