Transition with J. Brooke

Hey friends, this is John and I just wanted to share real quickly before we start today's episode that if you have a queer book that had a life saving impact for you, please reach out. I've had a couple of conversations where folks didn't know if they could or couldn't reach out to us and ask to be on the show and you are totally welcome. All you need to do is go to thisquirbook.com. On the homepage there is a form you put in your information, you click submit and then we will get back to you. So I look forward to hearing from you to talk about the queer book that saved your life. Okay, on with the show. This didn't really answer a question for me as much as it raised it, as much as it raised something that was running sort of subterranean in my system to the surface again that hadn't been raised in a while. You're listening to this queer book save my life. On this podcast we explore how queer books unleashes to be who we are, to love who we need to love and to find our place in the world. My guest today is Jay Brooke. Jay's full length poetry book. I can tell you the version that will make you take my side, won the editor's choice prize at Driftwood Press. It just came out earlier this month June 2026 available everywhere you get your books. Jay has received two push cart nominations, a 2025 best of the net nomination and was a finalist for the 2025 Iowa Review Nonfiction Prize. Their autobiographical essay hybrid won Columbia Journal's 2020 Special Issue Nonfiction Award. Their work appears in Electric Lit, the Rumpus Harvard Review and elsewhere. Jay is the Pro's book reviews editor at the Rumpus, poetry editor at Transpoetics Archive and the former nonfiction editor at Stone Coast Review. Hello Jay Brooke, welcome to this queer book save my life. John, thank you very much for having me here. All right, so without further ado, what is the queer book that saved your life? It is Chaz Bono's book transition, the story of how I became a man. And fun fact about this book and I say this as the founder of the queer Armenian Library because I am queer Armenian American because Chaz's mom is Cher and she is Armenian American. That means Chaz is as well. And this is I think the first or the second memoir by a trans person, a trans person of Armenian descent. But what we're here to talk about today is Jay. I'm very curious about how this book found you because as I see in my notes here from our pre-show correspondence, you are reading it in a rundown motel. Yeah, I know. I actually, it was a rundown motel that my spouse and I had purchased to redo. So Chaz only graced the premises once it was re-done into a boutique motel where I had chosen to spend the first year managing it so that I would understand our business. And so I was there starting at six in the morning and I did a lot of reading during that time. And Chaz's book transition was one of the books that rose to the surface and that I read in the early morning. It was like it could be interrupted a lot with people calling and saying, "Where's the light switch to plug my blow dryer in? Do you have an iron that you can lend me?" So Chaz's book is if you're ever looking for one, if you ever open your own hotel or motel, it's a very good book because you can be interrupted but also stay within the context of it. And as I understand it, you found it actually, you found a copy of this at your local library. I did. After searching all over the place. I went into my bookshelves. I'd moved since I read it and since we had that motel and I either lent it out or gave it away at some point. And I wanted to find the original copy because Chaz actually has later reissues with updates. So I wanted to copy I read originally and no bookstore in the area that I moved to almost five years ago had it. And we live in, I don't think of it as a conservative place, but I started to worry that, "Oh, God, it's banned in all these bookstores." And then as a last-stitch thing, I checked my local library, which I assumed was super conservative on the way home and they said, "Oh, which version would you like? We have many of them." So the library came through and that's a, and don't tell them that I made notes in the margins because it's a library book. Your secret, I guess, is safe with me on this public podcast. So you're in your boutique motel, you're helping guests with random odds and ends during their stays at your delightful boutique motel. What was reading transition bringing up for you then, this first time that you were reading it? So I don't, it landed on my desk because it was a celebrity memoir that somehow was, you know, featured in a window and the bookstores when it came out and I thought, "Okay, this is light reading." And from the second I opened it, it wasn't, not only wasn't it light reading, but what blew me away is that from, almost from page one, it was my childhood experience. Chaz starts the story very early. And for someone whose parents are not sunny and share and my parents are about as far from sunny and share as humanly possible. They're like a different species. He had almost identical childhood and the through line was the transness and being obviously very unaware of that except, you know, both of us assuming we were boys as very young kids. How? Okay, so walk me through what that experience is like then because you must have been having, what's the right word for this here? Like epiphanies or something, you're having this reaction to this book and maybe someone walks in and goes, "Hey, I need a hotel room for the day." Like what was that experience like? We didn't have that much walk in traffic. The experience was very epiphanic. I mean, you know, I read it and I was like, "Oh, this is just like me. This is so strange. This is about a trans man. Am I a trans man? I don't remember thinking I'm a trans man." And it was like that as I was, yes, taking reservations and searching for the blow dryer. So would it be appropriate to say then that this book by Chaz Bono was helping you re-equaint yourself with yourself? That's really, really, really well put. Yeah, I mean, I'm just going to take a second from this. You know, because of this interview, I've become a big fan of your other podcast, which is The Galee, which is, I know, shameless plug. You'll probably cut this out. Maybe you won't. But it's, you know, it's the only. No, I'm not cutting this out. All right, good. Well, it's the only. Okay, so I didn't know that there was not only that you were the only one, but there was a daily queer news show that I could actually tune into. So that's amazing. And I've now become, you know, your regular. But you, you know, because of that, and you see the news through that lens, you must encounter this sort of thing, you know, a lot, because certainly trans issues are at the forefront. And, you know, it's, we're reminded constantly that the world is certainly viewing us a minor minority through this lens. But so many people are re-assessing and viewing themselves through this lens. I mean, you must see this, right? All the time. Oh, the time. Same. Same or just. We're interviewing you. So I think that there is a question of geography. Like we tie our identities to our geography, like where we're born, where we're from. And now I think a lot of queer people are having to reassess that identity as it relates to geography by having to move to other places. I think that the pandemic was a huge area where people were spending time with them themselves and either re-acquainting or having queer awakenings during that time period. And so now being, you know, four or five years, six years out, we have people who are really coming into their own as they've navigated, right? They're their transition. But it is also from a political standpoint, there's this really weird thing happening. Well, not a weird thing. It's my argument that right, the right, the far right, Maga, however you want to define it in a given year, uses the hatred of queer and trans people as a unifying principle. Like when they're feeling indissire, they all manage to come together by hating us. Over, over a bathroom. Yeah, over about 100%. Yeah, 100%. And it's losing them elections. And we have some really stupid people on the left and I'm looking at a particular West Coast governor who thinks that we need to, you know, throw queer and trans people under the bus because they're using it to unify, but they're not using it, like they, Maga is using it to unify themselves, but they're not using it actually to win elections. When you look at the polls that say, you know, what is a primary issue for you, trans bathrooms, you know, trans folks in bathrooms are not one of them. gender affirmation schools is not one of them. it is for mega voters, but we were never going to get mega voters, right? So. Right. I could not agree more. It's just a divergence. You know, it's for the politically ADD and they're just ringing a bell over here at an arms length and hoping that everyone looks in that direction. And I agree that, you know, it shouldn't just be the progressives to carry the obvious cause for our community. Correct. And I think that we saw this in the early 90s with queer and trans service members. That was how they, how they unified themselves on the right in the early 2000s. It was gay marriage. And now we have, you know, their hatred of trans people and their desire to erase them from queer life. It is, it is a tactic to unify themselves, but it's not actually a tactic to win elections is my argument. And when you look at political scientists who have evaluated like the 2004 election where we had, you know, gay marriage amendments everywhere and every stay almost all of them. Like the idea was that they were doing all these amendments to win elections, but they, they didn't. That's like, there was this hypothesis was that they won those, but because of other reasons, it wasn't actually a factor that a gay marriage amendments, the marriage equality amendments were not why they won the election. So I think it's really important that people understand that, but that was a huge ramp. No, I want to say, actually, and I'll end it with and audience members, if you want to know why your other show is my new daily news show, it's this perspective. Thank you very much. You're an excellent, excellent arbiter student and, and, and, and a, a, counter of current, of history, current events. And I'd rather get my, my news through this lens. Well, I appreciate that. Love that. You can tune into the galley show every afternoon at 3 PM Eastern 2 PM Central. Exactly. But to come back to Chaz's memoir in our pre-show correspondence that we had, you were talking about how his memoir set you on a course to redefine who you were. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah, I mean, it entered my brain, you know, slowly as a, as a, me too. And again, I had a very elaborate life going on then. I was very busy. I was very distracted. It was not the, the first thing on my mind. But I started to realize again and again, I mean, that the book is just looking, the book is, you know, it's, it's over 200 pages. And this is not something that in the book is even portrayed as a sudden revelation. It's a very slow build. And the slow build as it hits one, as least as it hit me, was so parallel to my own existence that, you know, we're, we diverge at the end. But where Chaz netted out is very, very similar to, to where I netted out. And there are things deep in the book that, you know, were like additional waves coming at you of like, oh, yeah, and this, oh, and this. So we've had guests before on our podcast who were going, who had a queer awakening, a trans awakening, if you will, while reading a particular memoir or nonfiction book. And some of them have said, you know, it's, it literally provided me a road map. Like I literally did x, y, and z based off of what the author did. Did you find a similar thing happening for you? Absolutely not because this is where, this is where my parents are in sunny and share and our lives are very, very different. No. And I, you know, in the end, I have chosen not to live as a man in the end. And I did not. And that's what my book, you know, sort of explores my journey. I don't, I'm, I'm, I've rested at non-binary. And I, although I, absolutely was born male. And I don't seek chemical or surgical intervention at this point in my life. Very dissimilar to Chaz in the book, who chose to fully transition and, you know, is a trans man. May I ask why? Why is Chaz a trans man? I have no, you know, that's really, no, no, not that, no, may I ask. And this is a complicated, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, it's a complicated answer. And it's explored in my book. And it's not to, you know, shamelessly sell books. But I mean, it is, there, there are many reasons, you know, why anyone, any queer person is who they are and how they live their life. I mean, I think to be queer in general, you have so many years of navigation, of navigation and strange lands that navigating is not, you know, not only is it not an athlete, it becomes your, you know, your friend, it's familiar. It's, it's, you're better at it than I think than cis-straight people. So I think there are many ways that I navigate my transness. And, you know, my, my, my book and my poems explore those things. Was there a, or could you share a particular passage or event or thought that Chaz had that really resonated with you? You know, I, I, again, I marked up this book. I mean, there are so many, so many things. The very first resonations are simply, you know, his childhood, being who he was in his own headspace, which is who I was. I was, you know, I was motivated by sports I, you know, I was friends with boys, not, not girls. I didn't really understand girls. I did they didn't interest me. I liked all the, you know, all the traditional, you know, tropish boy stuff. And then you come of age and, you know, you have a mother either like mine or like share, who would really rather you, you know, get into your dress and constantly reminds you your female. And in trying to please them in one way or another, and society, you try to go along with that. So that was very, very real. Chaz deep in the book, I marked this one space. Can I, can I read from Chaz's book for a second? Please, yeah. So this is really deep into the book after they go through a lot and they come out as a queer woman and they're in a series of relationships and they, and they're very butch queer woman and they hang around with, you know, similar, similar women. And I at this experience, almost, and this is very deep in, you know, Chaz is probably in, in his 40s. And he says, I began to realize no matter what these women looked like, whether they identified as more feminine butch or something in between, they all identified as women. And they all were comfortable with their female identities and even seemed to enjoy being women. I'd always assumed that there was a small portion of the lesbian community, some of the butch lesbians like me who felt as I always had, wishing that I had been born a man. And it goes on. But it was like that, you know, I think a lot of us have this first queer awakening where we mistake ourselves because it gives us an avenue for acceptance in our masculine ways. And we slide into these lesbian roles. And yet in a room, they're all still bonding because, you know, they're still, you know, Jennifer Addiston and I'm still Matthew Perry, you know, in the same room. Interesting reference. It is. Well, it is, you know, but that's it's very true. You know, and I think that that's how I continued always to view the world and just took it as my norm. When you read in a book that, oh, someone else was taking it as their norm and chose to say, hmm, maybe this is not necessary. Maybe this is not normal. Maybe, maybe there's something else going on here. That really, that really caused me to, to, to shift that consciousness as well. So what happens next after you read the book? Well, there were these guests checking out of the hotel. I went home. My spouse had made dinner. The, some of the kids needed help on their homework. Life was happening. You know, life was very, very full. I was starting to write as well. That's one of the reasons also we had bought a hotel. It gave me time to work on that career at the same time. And I navigated towards grad school. I went and got my masters in writing and, you know, to be back in a classroom in 2018 was, you know, for the, you know, for gender, you know, and your correct pronouns to be immediately asked in every classroom. And that made it really simple. Because when asked, I was able to answer. So I think, I think working on that, working on my degree, writing more and more, which is like so many writers, how I explain myself to myself through, through writing, through art. I think that, that, that was the natural progression of it. Eventually, I changed my name, my pronouns, I've always dressed the same. So that didn't really matter. I, so a lot of times when we're, we're talking with folks and you're kind of, you know, listing out there ways that the book explicitly was impacting you. You know, if I came on the show and talked about the book, that saved my life. A lot of it was implicit because it was talking about a polyamorous relationship, which at the time I didn't read the book and go, I need to find a polyamorous relationship. I just started to write it. What book was that? Oh, yeah, a home at the end of the world by Michael Cunningham. Sure. Great book. Love. Great book. And I wasn't looking for a poly relationship. It turns out I ended up in a poly relationship. And when I revisited the novel, a few years into it, I was like, oh, shit. Johnathan just said that. I just said that six months ago. Or, oh, my God, Claire's doing that. That is something I would totally do right now. I found it implicitly impacting things that I was doing. I found myself saying and doing things that they had done without realizing I was doing that. Did you find any of that happening for you with Chaz's book? You know, okay, so what you bring up, which is really interesting, I think, by the way, Michael Cunningham, I was able to go here and read from his book that was new two years ago. And in a small little bookstore and I was completely star-strained. He's amazing as an author. I think writers and I think what books give us is that me tuness, like when you are first in a relationship and falling in love, when you realize there are all these things, oh, me too. Oh, you're like that. I'm like that. You know, not that you're the same people, but you have these certain core things in common. And I think when a book really resonates with someone, that's what's happening. So I know what you mean in that book. And while that's implicit, not explicit, I think there are implicit things throughout books I was reading at the time that reiterated the undercurrents of my lifelong outsider status. What does outsider mean to you? Like I could infer on that. And I think a lot of people listening to the podcast would feel kind of similar thing. Like I feel like an outsider too. But what the that mean for you. Well, it's funny to say, yeah, because people ask me if my book is a, you know, a queer book for a queer audience. And in some ways, yes, but it's really truly a book for anyone who's ever felt on the outside. And so many nonqueer people have that experience for lots of reasons. I think, I mean, look, when we're all born, we're literally thrust outside of the womb. We're thrust outside into the world. And then from the first moment, there are aspects of one self that are embraced and there are aspects of one self that are repelled. And queer people naturally have more of the latter probably in their early development. So I think that's what sets us on this course of outsiderness. Even if we're loved, we are inherently different generally, not always, than they then are our genetic family we come from or our adoptive family we come from. Generally, we're not the same. So anyway, so that begins us on our, you know, a therapist called the familiar taste in your mouth. It becomes so early and so familiar feeling like an outsider that it's just part of you. Like, you know, like, you know, you get hungry in the afternoon for something, you know, well, that's a familiar feeling. Oh, I'm different than everyone on this playground. And that's just become sort of part of you. At least that's been my experience. Yeah. Yeah. Is it yours as a queer person and is an Armenian? Isn't that been your experience being very outsider feeling? I mean, it's very dislocating, particularly being a queer Armenian. There's just like with the exception of like my brother and a couple of cousins, there was no one else who could relate to being in a bilingual household of where we were living in Northwest Lower Michigan. That's where my dad's family is from. Right. And so, and also like the experience of of Armenians having to adopt the language of the country or in. Right. So like my grandparents spoke fluent Armenian and fluent French. Whereas because of the French school system, my mom spoke fluent French first and then sort of like conversational Armenian. Like I say, like, you know, how they're Spanish. There's like, for Armenian, French Armenian. And then when she moved here to the States with her sister, it was, you know, they were like, you need to speak English first for schools to get through the education. And then French, French second because the family now back in France speaks predominantly French, not Armenian. And that's where they ended up after the genocide was France on refugee work visas. So it's, it's weird to be speaking a language, be it on a continent that you're not maybe necessarily supposed to be on speaking to languages that you're most likely not supposed to be speaking or wouldn't have been speaking. You know, if everything had gone, I mean, if there hadn't been a genocide. And then to be queer on top of it, like dislocates you even from your family, which you're trying to stay together and be part of and you have this connection to your family because there was this fucking genocide. And then but you're sort of cast out because you're queer. You know what I mean? There's all these like different levels and nobody, there was nobody to talk to about this. Like there were no books about this in Northwest lower Michigan. But there was that there is in the queer experience, which is really phenomenal that I found in the queer Armenian community when I was finally able to like branch out. First of all, it's like all across the globe, like all across the globe. It doesn't matter if you're in Glendale, California, in Boston and London and Yerevan, like we were all sort of having these same thematic experiences and it's wild, right? Like how does this happen? Like how are we all having these similar experiences even though we're growing up in different states and different countries and different cultures? Because you're all sharing that through line of that specific flavor of your outsiderness. You know, it's so specific and it's so small, but it's so powerful as a result that it informs a group of you who are geographically disparate, but otherwise incredibly similar. I'm going to use that to transition, if you will, sorry, bad pun. To your book, I can tell you the version that will make you take my side because what I'm looking at the book description here, you're talking about so many different topics living with a surgical or hormonal interventions. They're struggle to find their authentic places, traversing female anatomy, friendship, suicide, family, testosterone, social media, royalty, national phenomenon, and even the Pope. And I can see, you know, sort of these, you know, people can either all of the, like know all of these or be like, yeah, like the Packer's Marriage, you know, natural phenomenon, the Pope. I mean, please like talk to us about your new book. I think you just did. I'll damn it. I guess thanks, everyone for listening today. Yeah. I love, I love a good synopsis and I don't love talking about my own work. I like the work to speak for itself. So yeah, I mean, I look, I like writing about the same popular culture we're all living in and they were all moving through. And these are incredible times. And while every generation, I think, has said that I think, I think we're all in quite a an immersive moment of unprecedented right now. And yet we are all having our individual experiences as well as I call it the micro. People ask, you know, me either how I am or they go, well, how are you? You have adult kids, how are your kids? And I said, well, I tell everyone, like, you know, on a micro level, we could all have joy and happiness. But as soon as you go even remotely macro, I mean, what is there to say? You know, there's only those of us who can use art do. And so I think the poems in this book speak to that. It speaks to the micro that we all experience. And this horrific macro, we're all in a big vat of. Does that make sense? We're having an unprecedented moment with the Pope in this country where an American president is going after an American Pope. So I have to know, like, what are you talking about about the Pope in your book? Oh, it's so funny. Well, you know, books are written, you know, a year or two before they're published. So it was the last Pope that I wrote about, actually, who did say it was the previous Pope who did say some things about trans people, who seemed that, you know, he was, he had been, it was really, the poem is really about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel and the idea that the Pope really was originally Harold's it is, oh, you know, so liberal, such a breath, fresh air, but really under it all said, you know, Catholics should not alter surgically the body god gave them. You know, after a whole lot of having pasta with trans women, that's where he netted out. So That's what that poem is about. I digress, but that's that's that's that pope and that's it. I cannot believe though that the vice president is telling the current pope that he's misunderstanding Catholicism and I'll just leave it at that. It's the second pope that he's done that too. He did it with Francis too. It's wild that this guy without any divinity training whatsoever seems to think that he's an expert to talk to religious leaders about faith. And and when's it you're you're you're an expert on news when did when did he convert to Catholicism not that long ago? He's not a lifelong Catholic. He's a relatively recent Catholic who's telling the pope you really need to go back and take a look at what you're saying. Yeah, I don't I don't know his full faith tradition. I just I do know the internet conspiracy that he killed Pope Francis because he was literally like the last person that Pope Francis spoke to or maybe not like the literal last person but the literal like dignitary that visited the pope which I just feel so terrible for Francis that JD Vance was the last. I was going to say I was going to say if that's your last person that's it's disgusting. Frankly, the guy came up with a lie that people are eating cats and dogs. I know it's unbelievable. I know I know I can't I can't that's why I listened to that's why I listened to like your your your daily show but I don't want to be on that one. Yeah, I can't I can't stomach the news at the level you can I appreciate those of you who do it and and spoon feed it to the rest of us but it's unbelievable. Yeah, I limit it's weird because I limit my social media like on my blue sky. It was just it's just doom scrolling and making me depressed than people but you know my friends are like well why did you sort of new show where you literally have to deal with this every day and I'm like because social media is so passive like I can go on to a new show and I can frame things and I can bring in guests and I can cover something and contribute in a way that releases the tension. If it provides like this escape valve, you know the steam to come out as opposed to just boiling inside of me, you know I'm just going to explode. But also you know I try to live my life and not be complete, you know frozen because of it and I you know I talked to shoot who was it. Oh my gosh, I should know this. Darn it. Yeah. Well I mean there was a guest that I was talking to who was like you realize they had parties act up like they would march in the streets and they would protest and then they would have sex and make out with people at night. Like act up wasn't doing act up 24 hours seven days a week, you know like fighting for our rights, you know like the Reagan administration and getting medicine for people and helping people as best as they could during a pandemic and it was like okay yes we can live our lives. It's not also just about like going and doing you know like poppers you know going whatever but like there is queer joy as resistance and it's necessary to have those you know relationships and live our lives and not just be constantly battling the Maga. But yeah no I agree with you it is it's this this this full-time commitment to the insanity is what is syncing those of us who have you know a hope of getting getting through this. Like repoetry we have to read poetry we have to we have to we have to we have to read poetry we have to play sports and pizza. I find pizza is also you know a very good you know diversion. Okay. Okay so a question that I like to ask folks who are you recommending Chaz's book transition to right now like who's the person that like if you met them right now and they told you what you were going through like they're going through X and you're putting a copy of this book in their hands like who is that person. First of all I would never name that person because that's what's interesting like inheritance. I mean I I run into people all the time particularly less so now but you know in the former queer community it's sort of like you know when you buy a new car you realize you see all these versions of your car on the highway there are no more versions you're just noticing them and I think when I realized that my issue was not my sexuality but my gender and I shouldn't say issue that my core element was was about gender and not sexuality necessarily. I was able to recognize it in so many others and you can't just you know put a it's a very slow conversation if you even want to go there but there are you know there's certainly a lot of people in the queer community I think who struggle well who struggle anyway we all struggle but who are slowly coming to terms and perhaps they're looking at their gender and other sexuality and that's you know this this book is great for that. Jay thank you so much for your time today this has been a really special conversation and I've been I have been really looking forward to it and by means of a final question what is next in life for Jaybrook. Next in life huh that's it well my book is coming out on June 2 so I'm actually doing the book tour I am finishing a collection of essays I'm finishing editing it actually it's written and and I have I have a very political chat book that I may look for a home for if I have time but but I I don't really have the time to commit to it but if any publishers are listening it's a very political chat book if you're interested John knows where to reach me. Yeah. And how do folks stay connected with you about updates about your book particularly book events book tour stops. I mean yeah my website which is jbrkrights.com I try to keep it somewhat current and it has a link to buy my book you can buy the book on bookshop.org and I have a blue sky account at jbrkrights I am on LinkedIn I am on Instagram as jbrk_rights that kind of thing just like you just like all of us as we all try to find each other virtually I don't know come come you know find me on the road walking my my grand dog love it love it love it how about that I'd love to I'd love to see you there. Jay thank you so much again congratulations on your new book and thank you for joining me today. John thank you so much and I'll be listening in a few hours to your new show the galley. Alright and thank you to all of you for listening today would you like to be a guest on the podcast you can go to our website thiscarebook.com felt the form on the homepage and we will get back to by all the books we talk about on our podcast at our bookstore on bookshop.org the link is in the show notes and on our website at thiscarebook.com our podcast or executive produced by Jim Pounds accounting and creative support for our podcast is provided by Gordy Erickson our associate producers are Archie Arnold K. 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