For Today I Am a Boy

Peter Huang is born to Chinese immigrant parents in small-town Ontario in 1979 as the long-awaited boy in a household of girls. His father, eager to shed all vestiges of Chinese language and culture, speaks his last words in Cantonese after Peter's birth, assigning his newborn son the unofficial moniker Juan Chuan, or "Powerful King." Peter's father holds to strictly traditional ideas about gender and is uncomfortable with his son's reluctance to embrace conventionally masculine pursuits as well as his close association with his sisters. For his part, Peter wants nothing more than to emulate his beautiful, alluring oldest sister, Adele. Emotionally stunted by the disapproval of both his father and society at large and growing up in a home where such things are never discussed, Peter is very slow to realize that his long-repressed dream is attainable.