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Sara Farizan (she/her) is an Iranian American author of the YA novels Here to Stay, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel and If You Could Be Mine. Dead Flip (Algonquin Young Readers) follows Cori and Maz, friends who grew apart after their friend Sam's disappearance. Then, five years later, Sam reappears--the same age as the day he vanished.
Ryan La Sala (he/they) writes about surreal things happening to queer people. He is the author of Reverie and Be Dazzled. In The Honeys (PUSH/Scholastic), genderfluid teen Mars's twin sister, Caroline, dies under horrific circumstances. Mars decides to attend Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy in her place and befriend her old friends, a group of girls dubbed the Honeys. They are beautiful and terrifying--and Mars is certain they're connected to Caroline's death.
Here, the authors discuss Dead Flip and The Honeys, investigating gender expression and identity.
Ryan La Sala: One thing that I picked up on in both our books--and maybe this is because you and I are in the rainbow together (though not in the same band of the rainbow)--is the monolith of girlhood and how it's a trap. I loved, loved, loved that in Dead Flip we get to see Cori grow up and against this model. As a young girl, Cori is called a tomboy and told she needs to grow out of the behavior. Then in the present day she deals with the fallout of who she's formed herself into just to get by. And then we see her come to terms with the fact that this is not what she wants: she wants to embrace that "tomboy" part of herself. I wanted to hear from you about the parallel here--in The Honeys, Mars is also examining the monolith of girlhood but they're trying to find a way into it while Cori is trying to find a way out.
Sara Farizan: I think Mars sees the cracks in both girlhood and boyhood and the binary of summer camp in general. I think the girls' camp is so much more appealing and inviting to Mars, and they see it as more evolved in some ways, too. It's the difference between being welcomed into a group, and being a part of a group but not feeling welcome. Or the difference between being welcomed, but not understanding the rules.
La Sala: Right! Cori feels trapped in this definition of girlhood. She never made the choice for herself. But the expectations were there, nonetheless.
Farizan: And for Cori, it's also that she's attractive and that she has this older sister who is a hyper-sexualized, hyper-feminine '80s trope. Cori feels this pressure to get with the program and adopt the behaviors that she's learned from her girlfriends and sister. But her sister is trapped in this role--and she knows it. Cori learns that the way to get out of certain traps is to use what other people see as the gifts she's been given. So she learns that if she's going to survive high school without anyone learning her faults or her big secret, she can't have people thinking of her as the friend of the "missing ghost boy."
Going back to our discussion about being welcomed into groups: Cori attends a sleepover at one point where she learns the behaviors and the rules of the girls. Or she wants to learn but it feels foreign to her. You see this with Mars, too. When people say things like, "Boys will be boys," Mars challenges them. The boys in Mars's camp are saying suggestive things about the girls' bodies and there's no authority figure to stop them. Mars calls the boys out and makes them confront their sexist actions.
La Sala: This happens in the girls' camp, too: people tell Mars consistently that his sister wasn't like other girls. Mars bristles at this because Mars thinks, "Maybe she was!" But maybe there is no monolith to begin with and people haven't taken the time to look and investigate. Mars is begging everyone to take a closer look. Mars especially wants people to look a little harder at the Honeys and what they're hiding--the Honeys are aware of this monolith, and they use it to their advantage. It helps them put a division between them and the world.
Similarly, Caroline gets told by a guy who's trying to flatter her that she's not like the other girls. Caroline's gobsmacked by this, because every choice she's made is to try to be like other girls.
Farizan: And she sees that she can be like "other girls" but still be denied so much. There's so much vitriol around young people appropriately fitting into the mold of girlhood and there are things imposed upon those that identify with girlhood that they didn't get to choose. Cori finally realizes that no matter what she does or however she behaves, ultimately, the game is rigged.
La Sala: And that the "other girl" is propped up by the patriarchy--she's just there to make it really hard for everybody else to exist in her orbit.
Farizan: I think both of our books are saying, "There is no way for you to be, other than yourself."
La Sala: Right.