Light from Uncommon Stars

Katrina Nguyen is one of the three main protagonists in Light From Uncommon Stars. She is a transgender teenage girl who comes from an abusive background, and as a result, she suffers from severe anxiety and self-doubt. The novel explores the theme of Identity and the Struggle for Self-Acceptance through her character growth as she studies the violin under Shizuka. Katrina’s compassionate and courageous personality leads Shizuka to see the young woman as a daughter, and Shizuka decides not to sacrifice Katrina to Hell as she initially intended. While Katrina’s gender identity is a source of anguish for her in the beginning, it also gives her the ability to create world-changing music and makes her uniquely resistant to the temptations that others fall prey to.

As Shizuka observes, Katrina’s transgender experience shapes every aspect of her violin playing:

[H]er tonality had been honed by a lifetime of being concerned with her voice. Her fingertips were liquid, born of years of not wanting her hands to make ugly motions. And her ability to play to a crowd, project emotion, follow physical cues? Katrina had trained in that most of all (316).