This Book Examines Coming of Age as an Intersex Teen

Growing up in Nigeria, author Buki Papillon "grew up with twins literally everywhere about me" and heard stories about the high incidence of twins among Yoruba people. When it came time to write her novel, she knew she wanted to center a pair of twins in her story.

Papillon’s debut novel, An Ordinary Wonder, was released in September by Pegasus Books and tells the story of a pair of twins named Otolorin and Wuraola as they come of age. But Oto has a deeply held secret — she was born intersex and has always been told she must never tell anyone the truth about her identity. While Oto has always known she is a girl, her parents insist that she live as a boy, even after she fights to be sent to complete her education. As Oto discovers more about herself, she realizes that the best path to living as her true self is if she gets into college in the United States and starts a new life abroad under a new name.

We had the chance to talk with Papillon about her highly praised debut novel, the emotional process of writing Oto’s story, and how readers can support intersex, trans, and gender-nonconforming teens around the world.

Early on in your book, we learn that Oto is intersex and has always known she is a girl. Even though her parents see how this secret affects Oto, they are determined that she live life as a boy. Was creating those scenes difficult?

It was hard because Oto/Lori is real to me. The things that happen to Oto/Lori are things that happen to children in Nigeria on a constant basis. I’m sad to say they didn’t come out of the void. A lot of those things are truly representative of how a certain type of persecution is meted out to those who do not conform in a highly conformist society.

So those scenes were difficult to write and I did spend a lot of time sort of rewriting and fighting the urge to somehow tone them down so they would be easier [for the reader], so to speak. But each time I did that, I was reminded of why I was writing this particular book, and more importantly, why I was writing Oto/Lori. The book had to be true to the culture, the language, the traditions that Oto/Lori grew up in, and I needed to be true to the narrative that Oto/Lori was telling me and not watered down to make you more comfortable.

We also see throughout the book that the harshest treatment Oto faces is from her family, which made me think of the countless studies on LGBTQIA children that have noted that family acceptance is often key to a child’s well-being.

We’re shaped by so much, but we experience our families before we step out into the world. Then of course our families are shaped by the things they’ve experienced and it goes back generations, which is also part of the book.

One of the most powerful scenes in the book is when Oto meets Sister Angelica, who worked for an endocrinologist in the 1950s before taking her vows and is the first person to explain Oto’s condition to her. Was there a particular inspiration for Sister Angelica and those moments with her?

Sister Angelica was one of my favorite characters as well. I think that the significance of her was that she filled a little of the gaping void of information of what being intersex was for Oto/Lori while growing up in the 1980s and 1990s in Nigeria. The inspiration for Sister Angelica was the nuns at the school I attended.

I grew up in Nigeria for a good chunk of my life and we moved around quite a bit when I was a child, and I ended up attending Catholic schools that had convents. Some of the sisters were really strict and very scary. Some of them were lovely and sweet. The convents where they lived were forbidden to students and a place of enduring mystery. I had a very active imagination, so I imagined all sorts of things going on in them.

I wanted Oto/Lori to get those positive encounters during her pursuit of discovering the questions of “Who am I? What is true about me?” I also wanted Sister Angelica to represent to some extent the medical profession’s rather unfortunate response to people being intersex, which was to immediately medicalize the condition.

In a way, one could see how out of ignorance or even with well-meant intentions, medical professionals used to see being intersex as something to correct — but in these times there's absolutely no excuse whatsoever for medicalizing intersex persons or for performing any surgery on them unless they choose that when they’re of age and are fully aware and fully informed.

How can we better support intersex and gender-nonconforming kids and teens?

I think that we need to err strongly on the side of inclusiveness. I would ensure that we are following and supporting organizations like InterACT, which advocates for intersex youth, and the ILGA, which is the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice. It’s also important to read books by trans and intersex authors. It is impossible to read fiction that puts us in someone else’s life and come out unchanged, so I think we all need to read our way to a deeper and better understanding of each other.

This book comes at a time when intersex, trans, and gender-nonconforming children are being targeted by legislation in both the United States and the United Kingdom to prevent them from getting the health care they need or even joining sports teams and using the right restrooms. While this book begins in the late ’80s and continues through the ’90s as Oto grows up, were you thinking about these modern-day issues as you were writing?

That is such a great question. Yes, I had to find a balance between writing about what was like in those days when people basically didn’t have the knowledge that we have now. One of the biggest premises of An Ordinary Wonder is that also Oto themselves didn’t even have a word for who they were.

But these modern-day issues were very much on my mind as I was writing, and I had to create that balance. What I have concluded, in trying to balance what is and what was, is that we cannot know a person better than they know themselves. So I believe that we should do everything we can to support intersex, trans, and gender-nonconforming children by listening to their own voices. They know better than anyone else what’s best for themselves.