Author Talk: J Brooke- I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side w/ Aaron Hamburger

Author J Brooke discusses their book "I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side" at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

J Brooke's I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side begins in a childhood full of binaries, then navigates through an American queer / trans / nonbinary adulthood fraught with complexities including the question of top-surgery.

J Brooke’s work is known for exploring gender, family, and the incendiary combination of the two. With this, their first book, they deliver candid commentary on a unique gender journey. Born intrinsically male, assigned female at birth, and raised in affluent dysfunction in New York City, their gender expression attempted male, cis straight female, and cis gay female before embracing a nonbinary identity. Living without surgical or hormonal interventions, their struggle to find authentic place traverses female anatomy, friendship, suicide, family, testosterone, politics, packers, social media, motherhood, royalty, natural phenomena, cancer, marriage, and the Pope. Brooke is Prose Reviews Editor at The Rumpus, and lives in New England with their beautiful spouse Beatrice.

Brooke is joined in conversation with Aaron Hamburger, the author of the story collection The View from Stalin’s Head, winner of the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the novels Faith for Beginners, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, Nirvana Is Here, winner of a Bronze Medal from the Foreword Reviews Indies Book Awards, and Hotel Cuba, winner of the Bridge Book Award for American Fiction. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, O, The Oprah Magazine, Tablet, The Forward; and numerous other publications. He lives in Washington, DC.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE:

Visit us online at

#books #booktube