Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir

The author of Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars is Kai Cheng Thom, a Canadian writer, speaker, and performance artist. As a trans woman and the child of Asian immigrants, her identity shares clear similarities to that of the novel’s narrator. Thom notes that her book is a “fictionalized” memoir. However, by framing it as a memoir at all, Thom implies the novel’s interest in blurring the boundary between memoir and fiction. She invites the reader to consider how the narrator’s adventure both mirrors and departs from her own experience in coming of age as a trans woman. Both Thom and the narrator are also writers, specifically the genre of poetry, and have performed their work for an audience. In this way, they are both creative storytellers. Thom is also a former social worker and an activist whose practice is rooted in what she refers to as radical, transformative love. Her perspective on the power of love correlates with the narrator’s realization about the importance of “sweetness” and forgiveness. In addition, Thom’s work as a community educator mirrors the work that