BOOK TOUR: Nonbinary, Tran, Pan, and Lovesick by E.S. Corby (Excerpt & Giveaway)

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will award a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Sex is awkward! Gender is confusing!

Discovering his gender and sexual identities in the lonely dungeon of the pandemic, Echo Corby found an outlet through poetry. Graduating high school as everyone was thrust into isolation, friends were hard to find and love was even harder. Loneliness made him crave connection even more, but what did he like and who would love him?

Piecing together the queer world, Corby uses comedy and anecdote to express the uncomfortable ins and awkward outs of gender, sex, love and all outrage that comes with categorization. This collection of autobiographical poetry is a form of release and expression of the vibrant emotions that so many of the LGBTQIA+ community struggle with.

Corby prides himself as an open-book. The vulnerability enclosed within these pages proves as much.

Read an Excerpt

My Name is Not my Pronoun

No, sir/madam,
My name is not my pronoun.

Yes, sir/madam,
I have a pronoun and it is not my name.
Nor is it “it.”
My pronouns are he/him, she/her, they/them, xe/xem.

Yes, sir/madam,
I did say, “I’m happy as long as you’re trying.”
That does not mean I am an object, or a time period, or a figure of speech,
Where you can replace my pronoun with my name.

Why, sir/madam?
Why do I feel the need to correct you when you’ve corrected yourself?
Because when you say the wrong pronoun, then in an effort to fix your mistake, repeat the sentence only with the pronoun replaced by my name…
That disrespects me,
And my choice,
To go by he/him, she/her, they/them, xe/xem.
You disrespect me and my pronoun.

My pronoun is meant to present myself as the male I truly am, or the female I was always meant to be,
It’s meant to scrap aside the foolishness of gender when you call me they/xe instead of she/he.
You’ve prevented yourself from calling me the wrong thing, yes,
But have you committed yourself to getting it right?
Or have you replaced my pronoun,
With my name?

How does it sound, sir/madam,
When I say, “Oliver walked Oliver’s dog through Oliver’s neighborhood before Oliver stopped Oliver, realizing Oliver’s keys were still at Oliver’s home.”
It sounds like shit, doesn’t it?

I am not subterranean to you, sir/madam, who walks at ground level.
Nor am I standing on your shoulders; I walk beside you—
See me there?
I just want to be level with you, sir/madam.
I prefer to be your partner, not your butler.
When we stand on either end of a scale, I want us to weigh the same.

So, no, sir/madam,
My name is not my pronoun.
My name is who I am, my pronoun is what I am.
I am a he/him, she/her, they/them, xe/xem.
And a human being.

About the Author:

Having started writing “seriously” as an ignorant fourteen-year-old, Echo has progressed in his writing and editing skills since finding the inspiration in middle school. His whole life, his imagination has always driven him in the creative writing and arts fields. The imagination of childhood has never left him but has evolved into something malleable to his career and tolerable in his vocabulary and sentence structure. Echo’s writing and other creative endeavors have deep relevance to his personal life, as his characters, world and themes always reflect aspects of his personality and identity in ways that may go beyond the average reader’s comprehension. Often writers add elements of themselves to their characters, as it is easier to write what we know, but Echo goes beyond that in exploring deeply sentimental to traumatic elements in his life as a form of therapy for himself and others tackling similar internal conflicts. As a trans masc, nonbinary, pansexual man discovering his identity in the middle of a pandemic, his writing also acts as a way of exploring himself deeper as well as dealing with mental health issues he has been struggling with his whole life. Writing is both deeply personal for him and also something he has always wanted to share with the world. He feels emotions are better told then hidden and that building a community is extremely important to recovery and rejuvenation.

Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Nonbinary-Trans-Pan-Lovesick-Corby/dp/B0BYTNKDZV

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