Beautyland

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses suicide and anti-gay and anti-asexual bias.

Adina is the protagonist of this novel, a biography of her life. She has black hair that is hard to style and skin that looks like she has a year-round tan, an inheritance from her Sicilian mother. Adina is raised in northeast Philadelphia by her mother after her father leaves the family when Adina is four.

Adina is a sensitive, observant, and quiet child who feels The Desire for Belonging but never quite feels like she belongs. Much of this sense of distance is explained by her learning, when she is four years old and activated, that she was sent by beings from a faraway planet to observe lifeforms on Earth. Adina never questions this explanation for her identity, nor does she ever rebel from this assignment. Rather, just as she is an avid student on Earth and placed in an accelerated learners program, she is an attentive student during her sessions in the night classroom. She enjoys observing and reflecting on what she sees around her, beginning with her first report on bunnies. This leads to a lifelong hobby as a writer.