Como author writes book on transgender child

By JAN WILLMS

The struggles and emotions of Joey, a nine-year-old child who is dealing with the knowledge that she is a girl growing up in a boy’s body, come alive on the pages of Alex Liuzzi’s book, “I Am Here.”

Como area resident Liuzzi said he has been writing since he was 12 and has explored a lot of different styles of writing, but he has found that taking on the voice of a child has helped him reach emotions much more easily.

“They are more raw, without a sense of vagueness behind them,” he said. “You get what the child is feeling immediately, and how they can react to these emotions.”

For this book, published in April, Liuzzi drew on his teaching experience, as well as his experiences in high school and college.

About ten years ago he was teaching at a middle school. “I had a rainbow flag on my door and often allowed very open conversations with my students,” Liuzzi recalled. “Some students felt very discriminated against based on their sexual orientation, so they asked me to start a Gay Straight Alliance with them.”

Liuzzi said these students opened up about the struggles they faced that adults didn’t seem to be helping with or even allowing them to participate in. He said the students in middle school were just starting to face their sexuality, but for many of them it was gender confusion.

“How do they have that conversation with adults, and how do other kids see them?”

Liuzzi said he switched from teaching at a public school to a private Quaker school, which had very open values and conversations with students, with mutual respect for everybody.

“It seemed like things were changing. But then I switched back to teaching in public schools and while there was more openness, there was a little anger from some kids when other kids stepped outside the established norms.”

Liuzzi said he also drew on his experiences during high school and college with the gay community in writing this book and creating some of the characters.

Liuzzi said he started the book with the premise that the core character, Joey, was a child who was confused about her  gender. “But as soon as I started writing, I knew the book would be about more than gender confusion. This child was going to know she was in the wrong body.”

Liuzzi said as he progressed with the book, he let the other characters come in, and the story unfold.

“With some novels I have gone back, and made lots and lots of edits and taken out some of the characters,” Liuzzi explained. “That wasn’t the case with this one.” He said it felt like every character was doing something for the transition in Joey’s life

“There was a purpose for every character, and it doesn’t always happen that way,” Liuzzi continued. “Some characters feel right when they’re coming out, and then I go back and they feel like they’re a waste of space.”

This book is Liuzzi’s third published novel. His first was “Center of the Universe,” a second person narrative written in a “you do this, you do that” sort of voice. “It’s about a 24-year-old who is going through a life crisis, and it’s a little quirky,” he said. His second novel was called “Over Mud Creek” and is told in the first-person voice of an eight-year-old. His family takes in and fosters a homeless child, and the story is about his interaction with that child and his family.

“That book and the current one are the only two younger voices I have used, of the many books sitting on my shelf that are not published,” Liuzzi said with a smile. “They still need lots of editing.”

Doing the editing is the hardest part of the writing process for Liuzzi. “It’s going back and seeing how I can help say things better, have an order and flow. It’s always felt unnatural.”

He took a class at the Loft 10 years ago that he said was essential in helping him see that editing is a necessary part to make the book readable and not just a voice coming through.

“Writing is the easiest part,” Liuzzi said. “As soon as I get a character that speaks to me, it is the easiest thing in the world. I sit down, and I don’t want to stop. The character becomes very separate from it. It is me making sure their voice is heard vs. me working to write.”

Liuzzi’s first writing experience at 12 was a Halloween story about two characters wanting to push each other down a well. “It was sort of a scary story of how it was going to happen,” he said. “I haven’t read it in a long time, but I think it was pretty horrible. But the teacher read it to the class, and I remember thinking that maybe I could tell stories in that way.”

He wrote short stories for a few years and then started writing poetry in high school. In college, it was back to short stories, and he wrote his first novel when he was 21.

Liuzzi got his undergraduate degree in history and taught social studies for many years. He left teaching to do a Ph.D. in international development. “After finishing half my program, we became pregnant with another child,” he said. “I have two teenagers. Now I stay at home and watch my five-month-old part-time and work at the Minnesota Board of Teachers part-time. So the amount of time for writing has actually shrunk.”

But no matter what he has been doing, Liuzzi has kept writing. “Writing is the one creative expression I have to do,” he said. “I have done other creative things in my life, but they come and go. Writing is some part of me that needs to be released.”

He usually has written at a desk in his bedroom, but a recent move provided him with an office. He writes at night or early in the morning while the rest of the family is asleep. “I can’t write when other people are around or awake,” he noted.

Liuzzi has already started his next novel, a science fiction story about a woman who has lost her father.

Although Liuzzi usually has his characters struggling with some issue, he said he always likes there to be some lightness to his books.

“I’m a happy ending person,” he explained. “When I read or write, I like there to be some sense of hope at the end.”