Kate Bornstein’s Workbook: Analysis

My New Gender Workbook

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What

“A step-by-step guide to achieving world peace through gender anarchy and sex positivity.”

Format

  • Book with clear chapters
  • Designed to look like composition notebook (cover)
  • Mostly text, with some images

Content

  • Narrative text describing different aspects of gender identity
  • 3 Kate avatars, representing 3 different Kate identities, with additional commentary/stories, sprinkled throughout text in margins
  • Tweets, comments, stories from other voices (often twitter users) about topics in margins
  • Incorporating twitter voices even more, whole sections devoted to twitter threads and twitter users answers to questions like, Who Am I?
  • Blank (or mostly empty) pages for jotting down ideas, completing Kate’s assignments, several blank pages in the back
  • Various exercises, like “The 10 minute a day gender outlaw exercise” (56-57)
  • Crossword puzzles
  • Section on the beginning about comfort (4-7)
  • Concluding chapters explore what to do with new information/understanding developed by completing gender workbook
  • Book ends with series of Kate’s favorite “g’nite” tweets that Kate has written

Purpose

A resource/survival guide for readers to use to “put the ideas and theories [introduced/discussed in workbook] to work with the intention of putting an end to the suffering of all sentient beings” (xiii).

Useful for my book?

I like the inclusion of Kate’s many voices (3 different avatars) and the incorporation of tweets (in margins). I wouldn’t mind including some of my own tweets + social media posts (tumblr? instagram?). I also like how Kate uses the margins to create space for alternative accounts–zie puts different voices/theories/ideas beside each other. And, I like Kate’s use of quizzes. I had some quizzes in my last book and found it be a lot of fun to create them.

I appreciate how Kate leaves some blank pages at the end and encourages readers to write on/in the text. For my project, I want to experiment with how to get readers to take notes, write in margins. Is leaving bigger margins enough? Should I provide instructions/exercises for writing in the book? I’m not sure about this one. Does it become too heavy-handed when you ask the reader to write in the margins? How do you encourage that marginalia without requesting it?