Cross-Dressing Vollmann

“As she works on me, I fall into a drowse, enjoying the caress of the black brush, the sound of rain outside, Yukiko standing over me. I gaze up at her chin and lips, her brown hair, her tinted eyelids. Her eyes are far away, for she is gazing not at me, but at my face, which is now halfway feminized. She is painting my eyebrows on. I open myself to her soft fingers on my temple, the silver gleam of the brush, and her fingers on my eyebrows.”

An excerpt from William T. Vollmann’s Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater has been posted online… with pictures.

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Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeney’s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed News’ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award), and the author of a YA novel and picture book forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He uses Twitter.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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