The Symptoms Of Being Human Riley Garvin

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Riley Cavanaugh, a unisex name, a genderfluid… Boy? Girl? The Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin highlights the life of Riley, a teenager who struggles from anxiety and accepting his/her gender fluidity. Riley’s gender is never identified, which leads the reader to perceive the teenager as nothing other than a human. Riley struggles with coming out to his/her friends and family, and this novel explores the journey he/she endures. Through falling in love with his/her best friend Bec, creating a fake account on a blog that blows up and becomes famous, fitting in at a new school, and trying to ignore the gender slurs throw at his/her guts by people who believe he/she is disgusting and repulsive, Riley must build up the courage to come …show more content…

This setting is important to Riley because The Q is the only public place where Riley feels accepted, loved, and different in a good way. Mike/Michelle, the “leader” of the support group, exerts the tender feeling of allegiance and compliance when he/she cheerfully greets the visitors and affirms that they can feel impervious to express the hurricane of emotions swirling through their heads while they’re in the presence of Queer Alliance.
‘Welcome to Queer Alliance, which we affectionately call ‘the Q.’ We’re a gender and sexuality support group, and you don’t have to fit into any specific category to be here. Some of us are gay, some of us are trans, and some of us are genderqueer. Some of us are out, and some of us aren’t. This is a safe place where we share what we’re going through. And tonight, we have some new faces, and some old friends, too” (Garvin …show more content…

The plot was very predictable, but overall there was a firm story behind the afraid, indecisive teenager. I would recommend this novel to anyone who’s afraid of unveiling their true identity to the people they love, or to those who are interested and curious in learning about the feelings of someone who is judged so heavily every day. Riley once explains her feeling of unsureness she endures daily when he/she says to the reader, “It’s like I have a compass in my chest, but instead of North and south, the needle moves between masculine and feminine. I know it’s not like that for all gender fluid people- but that’s the best way I can describe how it is for me” (Garvin 25). This novel would surely be inspiring and enlivening to people who struggle with the matter of feeling accepted in a society where no one ever really

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