The Muscular Compassion of "Paper Girl"

Summary

Although “Paper Girl” is partly centered on Macy’s struggles to reconnect with her family, the star of the book is a young trans man named Silas, whom she befriends. His inclusion could come across as a cynical ploy, a way of measuring social progress in a backward town. But Macy’s interactions with Silas, and his role in the book, feel organic; she does not reduce him to his gender. Silas meets Macy at a crucial point in his life. After scraping by in high school, he’s trying to keep up at college while working as a welder, and he’s looking after his siblings, who have been removed from the care of his drug-addicted mother. Macy worries he may never graduate. She is astounded by the sheer amount of hustling required in Silas’s daily life. She documents the socioeconomic factors working against him—his inability to get financial support for school, the lack of well-paying jobs available, the number of family members battling addiction, and the eternal challenges of getting reliable transportation. But his resilience continually surprises Macy, who suspects she would not have had the same endurance as the new generation. She encounters many children who are hoping to make it big on social-media apps like TikTok—who see fame as their ticket out of a life in which they’re working multiple jobs and will never make enough money to go to a “good” college. For some of these kids, college attendance is actively discouraged by their parents, who fear that if their children do end up leaving, they may never come back. Or, worse: they’ll come back changed. “It’s no longer just whether you can afford college,” one former senator’s aide tells Macy. “It’s the whole ‘If you go to college, you’ll leave home, move to a city, and you’ll turn into a liberal.’ ” Macy cites a statistic: one in five Americans has lost touch with loved ones over their politics. She wonders who is more brittle, less able to reach across the divide, liberals or conservatives?Macy’s own youth was hardly idyl...