When the Moon Was Ours

The exploration of Gender Identity drives several of the novel’s key conflicts. The story is told from the perspectives of a transgender character, Sam, and a cis-presenting character, Miel, navigating coming-of-age arcs and the experience of falling in love. Anna-Marie McLemore reveals Sam’s transgender identity slowly—calling him by a gender-neutral name, using male pronouns for him, and referring to him in the introductory chapter as “the boy called Moon” (3) with no additional context. This narrative choice normalizes Sam’s gender identity, immediately asserting the novel’s position that Sam is a boy; no additional context is needed or required. Grounded in this premise, McLemore reveals pieces of Sam’s backstory and transgender identity as the novel progresses, acknowledging both the internal and external challenges he faces in his arc toward self-acceptance.

McLemore also explores the intersectional discrimination that Sam and Miel face in their town because of their racial and cultural backgrounds. While the setting of the novel is never specified, it’s clear that Sam and Miel’s school is majority white and conservative, and structured in such a way that the reveal of Sam’s transgender identity can be weaponized against him. Because of the social stigmas in place, Sam relies on the Afghan tradition of bacha posh (which translates to “girl dressed as a boy” in English) to justify his inner journey to himself. As he begins to navigate his identity, it initially feels safer to see himself as part of a proud lineage of women who make the choice to live as men. However, the limitations of this role and the ways it differs from his own identity quickly become clear since the bacha posh only live as men temporarily—going on to live as mothers and wives—while Sam’s identity as a transgender boy is permanent. In this way the concept of bacha posh becomes the first step in his journey of self-acceptance—an imperfect framework imposed on an inner self he does not yet understand.

A turning point in Sam’s character arc comes with the revelation that Aracely is a woman who was born into a boy’s body, then transformed by the river and reborn into the body of a woman. Aracely reveals that she was always a woman on the inside, even when she wore a different shape; however, the needs and constraints of her family kept her from embracing her true self before the river intervened. It was only when she lost everything that she was given the gift of fully embodying her true self. When Aracely says “this is me not hiding” (225), she encompasses everything that transgender people feel when they’re finally given the space to be true to their inner natures.