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Christophe Archambault

As I read Elliot Page’s eloquent and enthralling memoir, “<a href="https://amzn.to/3Nf7uxS" target=_blank>Pageboy</a>,” I thought about a scene from Season 2 of the Netflix superhero dramedy “The Umbrella Academy.” Page’s character, Viktor Hargreeves, who at this point in the show hasn’t yet <a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/umbrella-academy-season-3-cast" target=_blank>come out as a transgender man</a>, sits in a car with Sissy Cooper (Marin Ireland), who’s in a straight marriage that is smothering her. The two are swaddled in darkness. “Some of us don’t get to have the life we want,” Sissy laments. “That doesn’t mean we don’t want it.”

Flatiron

In crucial ways, “Pageboy” is in conversation with that sentiment: <i>Some of us don’t get to have the life we want</i>. In the book, the Canadian actor, who publicly came out as transgender in 2020, charts the tremendous emotional and psychological effort it took for him to confront suffocating social messaging about gender and sexuality. Viewed in this light, Page’s book, which arrives at a moment of heightened anti-queer hostility, as Republican legislators across the United States <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/politics/anti-lgbtq-plus-state-bill-rights-dg/index.html" target=_blank>push a record number of bills</a> chiseling away at LGBTQ+ people’s rights, is many things at once: memoir, yes, but also cultural analysis and civil rights cri de coeur.

Fittingly, Page begins with the movie that changed everything: “<a href="https://amzn.to/3OSdPRg" target=_blank>Juno</a>.” Many readers might remember the 2007 film starring Page as a charming account of growing up that explores complex themes such as pregnancy and adulthood. However, the legacy of “Juno” for Page, who at the time was grappling with aspects of his identity, is much more fraught. Its release was accompanied by the kind of endless media scrutiny of sexuality that was all too common in that era. He recalls being around 20 years old and scanning a Village Voice article that implored: “Let’s put the dykey pieces together. Is Juno a you know?”

A memoir in which everything is classified and nothing is secret

That period was also challenging because of oppressive Hollywood mores. Page explains that industry people told him that, in a world as intolerant as ours, he ought to keep his queerness a secret, lest he miss out on professional opportunities. So he says he wore the dresses and the makeup. He tried to convince himself that his dreams were coming true — but, actually, he was miserable. “Being made to feel that I was inadequate, erroneous, the little queer who needed to be tucked away while being celebrated for repudiating myself was a slippery slope I’d been sliding down since before I could remember,” Page writes. “Like a film stuck to my skin, I couldn’t wash it off.”

“Pageboy” is filled with these kinds of meditations on the ambient quality of anti-queer bigotry. The book prods readers to face how such sentiments can surface within <a href="https://psmag.com/news/why-is-hollywood-so-liberal" target=_blank>ostensibly welcoming environments</a>, preserving the status quo. One of the most frightening episodes Page recounts is from last year, when he was in West Hollywood, a legendary gay village, visiting friends. As he was preparing to cross the street, a man lashed out: “I’m going to beat you up, f--!” And: “This is why I need a gun!” (It was impossible for me to read these lines and not consider how today’s political climate <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-anti-lgbtq-rhetoric-fuels-violence/" target=_blank>incubates such behavior</a>.) Page fled into a nearby convenience store and begged for help. “I have learned to compartmentalize these moments for the most part. … Let it run off my back like the beer I had thrown on me while walking down Queen West in Toronto less than six months before,” he writes.

Theo Wargo

“Pageboy” doesn’t focus solely on pain. Some of the book’s most moving parts paint vivid pictures of Page’s touching relationship with his mother, Martha. When he was little, he and his mother would go to Peggy’s Cove, about a 45-minute drive from Halifax. He would climb rocks and pretend to hunt for treasure, and the two would communicate via fake walkie-talkies: “I love you. Over. Click. I love you, too. Over. Click.” Their relationship was far from perfect. Page says that at times when he was younger, he felt that his mother “wanted what the other soccer moms had, a daughter.” Still, he writes, “amid all of the untangling that’s led me to me, no matter the difficulties or moments of distance, I’ve never doubted my mother’s love for me.”

Page’s bond with his mother is worlds apart from his relationship with Dennis and Linda, his father and stepmother. The former would ricochet between brimming affection and emotional neglect, while the latter appeared to delight in picking on Page and coaxing the rest of the family to join in. Page says he can’t imagine repairing his relationship with them, so deep are the wounds they’ve left over the years.

The book is an intense, emotional read, delivered in image-drenched prose. Of the toll of Hollywood’s pressure to tamp down his queerness, Page writes, “The compulsion to tear apart my flesh, a sort of scolding — I became as repulsed as them.” Of some of the most unrestrained sex he’s had: “We immediately started to kiss, a physical chemistry that takes control, magnets sucking.” Of his body’s betrayal: “Eleven was the age I sensed a shift from boy to girl without my consent.” As a gay person, I viscerally understood Page’s description of the gnawing sense of belatedness that can come with being queer; narrow social norms can delay certain experiences for us or make us miss out on them completely. In the days immediately following his surgery, he relied on the supervision of his cherished friend Mark, who “contended with bursts of grief and anger, at all the time lost, at all the self-hate, at all that could have been.”

Often organized thematically, with titles that range from pithy (“Paula,” “Speedo”) to arch (“Sexuality Sweepstakes,” “Your Heavenly Daddy”), “Pageboy” slips back and forth among different decades. Some readers might yearn for more cohesion, for something ordered a little bit more conventionally. But I see honest disorientation. Here’s a queer person piecing together the fragments of his life, craving to be understood on his own terms. This desire fits the book into the broader canon of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/books/review/critics-take-queer-writing.html" target=_blank>modern transgender memoirs</a>, stretching all the way back to Christine Jorgensen’s “<a href="https://amzn.to/462FF3x" target=_blank>A Personal Autobiography</a>,” from 1967.

‘Transparent’s’ Alexandra Billings endured cruelty but found fame

Always, Page seems to view himself as part of a much wider queer community. In fact, the dedication reads, “To all those who came before.” This solidarity also manifests in his awareness of how rare his relative privilege is. Transitioning as a famous, Academy Award-nominated actor hasn’t been without its unique challenges. Page, though, realizes that he has access to resources that many transgender people don’t. “This is a complicated matter to write about, because some people who are reading this have to wait years and years to finally have their surgery,” he acknowledges, “or will never have access to gender-affirming care.”

Page doesn’t settle for easy conclusions. “Even though I am extremely lucky,” he writes, “this narrative where trans people have to feel <i>lucky</i> for these crumbs — that we fought hard for, and still fight for — is perverse and manipulative.” He’s grateful, definitely, but he shouldn’t have to “grovel with gratitude,” as he puts it, because everyone ought to have access to the care they need. “It just should be,” he says.

Ultimately, Page performs a remarkable alchemy. He marshals memories and turns them into an appeal. “Let me just exist with you,” he writes, “happier than ever.” Reading those words nearly made me cry. Page’s plea is small. It also feels very big.

Brandon Tensley is the national politics reporter at Capital B.

Brandon Tensley

Book review: 'Pageboy: A Memoir,' by Elliot Page

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[Review] Elliot Page’s memoir is also an urgent call for trans rights

(Flatiron; Mike McQuade for The Washington Post)

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