Title: Sasha Masha
Author: Agnes Borinsky
Genre: Young Adult Realistic Fiction
Number of Pages: 240
Rating: B+
Recommended?: Yes
Agnes Borinsky’s tender debut novel follows a transgender girl whose birth name is Alex, but who wants to be called Sasha Masha. Weird name, but that’s what she called herself once when her and her best friend Mabel played dress-up and took photos of themselves, and it holds a special meaning for her. Sasha Masha reminded me a little bit of Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Like Charlie in Stephen Chbosky’s novel, Sasha Masha is thoughtful, naive, and deeply insecure.
Sasha Masha is much more unsure about her gender identity than most trans characters in young adult fiction. It takes a large portion of the book for her to acknowledge that she might be. She starts dating a girl named Tracy, but Tracy becomes apprehensive when her ‘boyfriend’ takes her to a screening of a homoerotic art film about sailors screwing each other’s brains out. I mean… I can kind of understand why that might seem weird. Sasha Masha wants dating Tracy to make her feel like a ‘real boy’ but feels profoundly uncomfortable in her own skin. She reaches out to members of the queer community and starts to understand her own identity better over the course of the book.
This book feels different from most YA trans fiction… more literary, I guess. There’s less overt bullying and ostracization and more personal angst and confusion over identity and dysphoria. Sasha Masha is never officially ‘out’ to her parents, even though they seem like the kind of people who would ultimately be accepting even if it took them some time to get used to.
Their main sin seems to be that they’re overbearing, but it seems apparent that they love their daughter and just push too hard sometimes. The scene with Coco and Green (the wise old queers that Sasha Masha has dinner with) was the only part of the book that fell into didactic territory. There always seems to be these characters that have no real purpose except to drive home THE MESSAGE, and honestly the book would have been just as good- better, even- without them in it.
Overall, I liked Sasha Masha’s shy, introspective voice and that the road to her understanding her identity was more of a slow-burn than most. I loved The Perks of Being a Wallflower so I enjoyed reading another book that gave me that vibe. I felt the ending was a little abrupt and like something was missing from the narrative… it seemed like there should have been a little more there somehow. The author herself is transgender and I’m surprised this is her only book, this was published in 2020 and I’m eager to see what she decides to do next.
Sarah's Corner 