Girl Mans Up

By M-E Girard

Like Julie Anne Peters’ Keeping You a Secret, Girl Mans Up is a totally engrossing portrayal of a gay teen’s coming of age. Pen is only comfortable dressing like a boy, but it’s confusing to her friends and unacceptable to her family. And then one day she meets Blake, and little by little, it all begins to make sense.

Pen Oliviera is sort of chunky, an amazing gamer and a girl. Mistaken for a boy in restaurants, bathrooms and everywhere else—all she wants is to be the kind of girl she is.

“So, you’re like, a girl?” Avery asks. “Like a gay girl?”

“Uh…” I say, staring back at her, pulling the straw in and out of my cup, making it squeak against the plastic lid. Colby takes a drag, and exhales liquid smoke in swirls.

“I just didn’t want to assume…” Avery says, frowning.

“Assume I’m a girl? I am, so that’s cool,” I say.

“Do your parents know?”

“That I’m a girl?”

Colby snorts a laugh.

“That you’re gay,” Avery says.

“I don’t really know. I guess it’s obvious,” I say, but I don’t think of myself as being gay, because that word sounds like it belongs to some guy. And lesbian sounds like it’s some forty-year-old woman’s. And queer feels like it can mean anything, but like, am I queer because I like girls, or because I look the way I do? Maybe I don’t know enough words.

Pen is used to catching hell for looking and acting like a boy—especially from her parents—but in the Canadian suburbs where she lives, there’s nowhere to escape to. No Greenwich Village. No Castro. No LGBT club at school. No one to talk to, either. Her pal Colby, from two doors down, gave Pen respect from the first time he met her playing hockey when they were small, but Colby has become conflicted about Pen’s value to him, and he’s really nasty. Lucky for Pen—she’s met Blake—also a gamer, and a girl who Pen says “wins everything.” Can Pen manage to respect Colby’s “loyalty code” even though his jealousy of her has become cruel and toxic? Pen has to man up and figure it out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781443447065

M-E Girard

M-E Girard’s debut, Girl Mans Up, won the Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award. She lives just outside of Toronto, Canada, where she splits her time between writing YA fiction, being a mom to a toddler, and working as a registered nurse. M-E dedicated the bulk of her nursing career to working with special-needs kids, and more recently she was an ER and ICU nurse during the first waves of the pandemic. A 2013 and 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow, M-E is a proud feminist who is endlessly fascinated with what it means to be a girl—especially a queer, fat girl. You can find her online at www.megirard.com.

Reviews for Girl Mans Up

[fingerpost_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Girl Mans Up covers a lot of ground... family relationships, both good and bad, frienships, also both good and bad, teen pregnancy, being a lesbian, respect, loyalty, doing the right thing, and above all, being true to yourself.The narrator, Pen, is a Junior in a Catholic high school in the suburbs near Toronto. She knows who she is, but nearly everyone else seems to want her to be something else. She dresses like a boy, acts like a boy, hangs out with boys, and loves video games. She has trouble at school and at home because of it. The only two people who seem to really accept he as she is are her adult brother, Johnny, and her low-life friend Colby. Johnny is awesome. Colby is scum. And a big element of the book is Pen's growing realization that her best friend is a pretty horrible person.Pen has a crush on Blake, a girl works at the gamer's store in the mall, and is also a fellow student. Pen describes how she feels having a crush, and how she feels when that crush turns out to have the hots for her too, and Girard's writing is absolutely spot-on. Anyone who has ever had a crush (and I think that's about everyone) will recognize those feelings. Doesn't matter if you're hetero, lesbian, gay... those feelings towards your crush are the same.Although the book will surely be embraced mainly by a lesbian audience, it is entirely accessible to anyone, teen or older, regardless of sexual orientation. Because it's just a damn good book.

[howifeelaboutbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pen has always been what people would call a tomboy, but she doesn’t necessarily want to transition to be a boy - she just wants to be who she is. Her friends are all guys, and have been completely cool with her in the past, but now that Pen has a crush on a girl one of her friends wants, the group has started to fracture. As Pen explores a new relationship with a girl, her friend waffles between treating her sickly sweet, like she’s a fragile girl, and too rough, like she’s a tough guy. Pen just wants her old friends back, but she knows she might have to literally fight for herself.

[khaddox-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was provided to me as an uncorrected digital review copy by the publisher, via Edelweiss.

All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she’s always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts means she’s trying to be a boy—that she should quit trying to be something she’s not. If she dresses like a girl, and does what her folks want, it will show respect. If she takes orders and does what her friend Colby wants, it will show her loyalty.
But respect and loyalty, Pen discovers, are empty words. Old-world parents, disintegrating friendships, and strong feelings for other girls drive Pen to see the truth—that in order to be who she truly wants to be, she’ll have to man up.

Girl Mans Up is currently the most satisfying read of the year for me. I was happy with the depiction of Pen, a girl who doesn’t really feel like a girl, but doesn’t want to be a boy either. She digs girls, but doesn’t feel comfortable with the labels gay, lesbian, or queer. The thing about Pen is that she isn’t interested in putting other peoples’ questions about her gender or sexual preference to rest. She just wants to be allowed to be herself, without being treated like she’s a freak. This rings very true to me, and I feel it will do the same with teenagers. Even those who aren’t going through the same circumstances as Pen, will recognize the frustration of feeling that you have to fit into everyone else’s expectations, and God help you if you don’t. At the heart of it, this book is about acceptance: Acceptance of one self and of others, even if the only acceptance you can give others means accepting that they are asshats.
I would recommend this book to any teenager who struggles with needing the approval of others. I also highly recommend this to parents of tweens and teens, because a little understanding can cover a lot of hurts.

[susan.macura · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pen is a teenager who just wants to be who she is meant to be without having to conform to any labels. However, her traditional Portuguese parents want her to look and act more like a “normal” girl. The person who really understands her and stands up for her is her older brother, himself somewhat of a maverick in this family as well since he does not get a good job in the factory like his father but instead starts his own handyman business. Pen has friends at school she hangs out with – mainly popular Colby who she plays wingman for and Tristen, her best friend from childhood. Life gets complicated when Pen meets Blake, the girl of her dreams, while also becoming involved in the complicated relationship of Colby and his girlfriend Olivia. There are a number of mature themes discussed in this book concerning family, friendship, the right to choose, gender identity and sexuality, so this book is definitely for more mature teens.

[bucketofrhymes · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book. I hadn't realized how much YA fiction needed a character like Pen (or how few times I'd seen butch characters and this sort of exploration of gender roles and experiences).

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

fiction (LGTBQ; teen/school drama, girl gamers, and some fist-fighting; incidentally, Pen's parents are Old World Portuguese immigrants). I love the cover and how Pen grows as a character (learning about true friendship and how to make smarter choices in her actions) in this story. More, please!

Parental note: Pen is an 11th grader and she and her friends deal with some adult situations (teen pregnancy and the sort of actions that result in teen pregnancy (though nothing explicit), weed and alcohol consumption, fist-fighting (in which the inherent dangers are handily pointed out by a cop--namely, accidental death and going to jail for manslaughter).