Reviewed by Jess
TITLE: Tomboy
AUTHOR: Janelle Reston
PUBLISHER: NineStar Press
LENGTH: 50 pages
RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2018
BLURB:
Some kids’ heads are in the clouds. Harriet Little’s head is in outer space.
In 1950s America, everyone is expected to come out of a cookie-cutter mold. But Harriet prefers the people who don’t, like her communist-sympathizer father and her best friend Jackie, a tomboy who bucks the school dress code of skirts and blouses in favor of T-shirts and blue jeans. Harriet realizes she’s also different when she starts to swoon over Rosemary Clooney instead of Rock Hudson—and finds Sputnik and sci-fi more fascinating than sock hops.
Before long, Harriet is secretly dating the most popular girl in the school. But she soon learns that real love needs a stronger foundation than frilly dresses and feminine wiles.
REVIEW:
This is one of my favorite lesfic works of 2018 so far, and definitely my favorite YA read. I intended to read it throughout a day, but I finished it in one sitting. Despite its short length, this feels like a contained love story that has us rooting for an unconventional couple from the first chapter.
Reston’s author bio at the end of the book says she enjoys “queering gender,” and that is very apparent in this story. It would be easy to write Harriet and Jackie off as a traditional butch/femme couple, but there’s a lot more going on underneath the surface (not that there’s anything wrong with butch/femme dynamics). This story takes our long-held conceptions of gender in lesbian relationships and forces us to see it in new ways—for example, having two femme girls fall for each other, or having a butch woman carry a child and be a nurturing mother. This would be groundbreaking in many books today, so it’s especially interesting to read in the context of 1950’s postwar America.
I like how this story takes place in what was a very tragic time period for so many gay and lesbian folks without it being a tragic story. And characters acknowledge and accept Harriet and Jackie’s relationship in ways realistic for them at the time. For example, Harriet’s World War II veteran father recalls “men who went home together” after the war, allowing him to relate to his daughter through his own lens. The reactions and prejudices they face feel very real.
One of my favorite things about this story is how the less glamorized aspects of the 1950’s are included. It wasn’t all poodle skirts and milkshakes, and Reston is sure to acknowledge the inherent sexism and homophobia of the era. There are also those cringe-worthy parts we all want to forget, such as vegetables in Jell-O, atomic attack drills, and period belts.
Harriet’s passion for her career at NASA is a nice touch, but it also makes me wish Reston tackled the racism of the era as well, especially after we’ve all read or seen Hidden Figures and know how black women were especially overlooked in the field. Reston is a very a talented author, so I wish she found a way to touch on that very timely topic in this work.
I was surprised by how quickly I fell into this book and finished it. It’s a lovely romance that will take hold of you, but it’s also a fantastic historical read on gender roles and expectations.
RATING: 
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