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WHEN ZOE BOSSIERE was a child, their family moved from the D.C. suburbs in Virginia to Cactus Country, an RV park in Tucson populated by drifters, off-the-grid families and a host of creepy and enchanting desert creatures. In that wide-open landscape, Bossiere also began working through their gender identity, shifting from the girl they were raised as to the boy they aspired to become. "I associated boyhood with cool-headed stoicism, rugged self-reliance, the freedom to live on my own terms," Bossier writes in "Cactus Country," their bracing memoir about the experience.
In this interview, edited for space and clarity, Bossiere speaks from their home in Cannon Beach, Ore., about writing the book, the connection between boyhood and desert landscapes, and the book's arrival amid attacks on LGBTQ+ youth.
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What inspired you to write about growing up in the Southwest?
It wasn't until I left to go to grad school in Oregon and then Ohio that I realized how much Tucson shaped me. In these institutions, there was great pressure to be a certain kind of academic, to be from a certain kind of background. I had grown up in a trailer, and I had this incredibly gender-expansive childhood, but I found that when it came up in conversation it was kind of a curiosity, something that a lot of people hadn't experienced. So I was trying not to talk very much about Tucson because I felt that if I delved too deeply into that, perhaps I wouldn't succeed in these places.
I began to feel really alone, like there weren't very many people who could relate to the experiences that I'd had. I also was having a hard time understanding what my paths meant about the kind of person I am now. So it made sense to start thinking about,...