Ivana Bodrozic

Ivana Bodrožić’s latest award-winning novel tells a story of being locked in: socially, domestically and intimately, told through three different perspectives, all deeply marked and wounded by the patriarchy in their own way.

Here the Croatian poet and writer depicts a wrenching love between a transgender man and a woman as well as a demanding love between a mother and a daughter in a narrative about breaking through and liberation of the mind, family, and society.

This is a story of hidden gay and trans relationships, the effects of a near-fatal accident, and an oppressed childhood, where Ivana Bodrožić tackles the issues addressed in her previous works—issues of otherness, identity and gender, pain and guilt, injustice and violence.

A daughter is paralyzed after a car crash, left without the ability to speak, trapped in a hospital bed, unable to move anything but her eyes. Although she is immobilized, her mind reels, moving through time, her memories a salve and a burden. A son is stuck in a body that he doesn’t feel is his own. He endures misperceptions and abuse on the way to becoming who he truly is. A mother who grew up being told she was never good enough, in a world with no place for the desires and choices of women. She carries with her the burden of generations.

These three stories run parallel and intertwine. Three voices deepen and give perspective to one another’s truth, pain, and struggle to survive.

Sons, Daughters: A Novel

Jasper

By socializing with you they hoped to deck themselves out with the accolades afforded to an ally. They saw you as an endearing moron, forever in their debt. They, too, could step away whenever they cared to. Again, it wasn’t you who mattered.

A single glance at you that might show them some of the complexity of your being was enough to provoke them to revulsion and panic. The very fact of your existence gutted the image of their straitened world, in which nothing foreign could exist or survive. Indeed, the world for them existed only if it was exactly like them. They feared you with a divine fury, like a punishment arriving in the form of a disease, as if your very existence signaled their end, and they were prepared to do everything to destroy you.

Sons, Daughters: A Novel quotes

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