by Corrine Watson
March 22, 2022
Corrine Watson is a freelance writer and editor based in Charlotte, NC with her baby dragon, Ophelia. Corrine enjoys writing speculative fiction that hovers on the edges of reality and dares to dip into the mysterious. Keep up with Corrine on Twitter @CorrineWatson6
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Beyond the Binary: An Exploration of Gender Identity in Katya Kazbek’s Little Foxes Took Up Matches
FICTION REVIEW
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Little Foxes Took Up Matched by Katya Kazbek; Tin House Books; 350 pages; $26.95
Katya Kazbek’s Little Foxes Took Up Matches is a unique coming of age tale exploring the complexities of gender identity. The story follows Mitya, a young boy living in post USSR Moscow as he struggles to find his place in the world as a boy, a girl, or something in between. Kazbeck’s writing is deeply emotional in ways that are loving, witty, and often heartbreaking. Through disillusionment and self-discovery, Kazbek masterfully uses the perspective of a child to illustrate how the socially constructed binary lines of gender are often blurred.
It started with a needle and the fall of the Soviet Union, two seemingly unrelated events that Kazbek uses to weave together this modern fable. When Mitya was two, he swallowed his grandmother’s sewing needle, which could have easily been his death sentence. Yet he emerged unscathed. Throughout his adolescence, he believes the needle is his strength and protection as it is with the mythological, gender nonconforming character Koschei the Deathless who “may not be killed unless someone breaks the needle that is his death.” Kazbek intertwines Mitya’s adventures growing up in post-Soviet Union Moscow with interludes of Koschei's journey through heaven and hell. The clever incorporation of this tale parallels Mitya’s life just enough to give the narrative a magical edge and draws more overt attention to the main narrative’s more nuanced themes regarding the disillusionment of the morality within a flawed social hierarchy.
This novel stands out from traditional coming of age narratives with Kazbek’s precise depiction of self-discovery through gender. Mitya was five the first time he put on his grandmother’s make up. While his mother is impressed, she still sees this act as a deviance that must be hidden. As an insult to his frail emotional son, his father calls him a “devchonka, a girl.” In this moment, he is transformed. “The word devchonka was everything to Mitya. It sounded like a magical spell, like something that was not to be said out loud.” While those around Mitya want to define him into definitive identities, he is never eager to define himself. As he gets more comfortable presenting himself in public as either a boy or girl in subtly accessorized ways, he decides that gender is determined by the observer. He likes being a girl, but he also likes the freedom to choose. While his sexuality is only ever briefly discussed, Mitya is unsure how to define it because he doesn't see himself entirely as a boy. When his grandma admires his curly blonde hair, she tells him, “Everyone will like it. Girls and boys." This moment strikes Mitya because "he had no idea whom he would prefer to like him, but the thing that he knew for sure was that he desperately, overwhelmingly wanted to be liked. And the fact Babushka understood it, with nuance, with ambiguity, was extraordinary. Mitya felt seen." To Mitya living on the line of androgyny always felt the most comfortable.
Throughout his adolescence, Mitya is left home alone, often choosing how he spends his days for himself. He might go to school, stay home and practice with makeup, or explore Moscow meeting an eclectic cast of acquaintances. This freedom gives him the ability to discover new aspects of himself and the world around him as he befriends the homeless and an artsy bohemian crowd. Kazbek uses these moments to move the plot forward and illustrate the lines between good and bad are ambiguous and fraught with contradiction. Mitya’s cousin Vovka returned from the Chechen war broken, and treats his PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and general anger at civilian life with alcohol. Mitya feels sympathy for his cousin as he watches him suffer though night terrors and an attempt at sobriety but fears and hates him for subjecting him to the brutality of sexual assault. When a kind homeless man Mitya considered a friend is murdered, his first assumption is that Vovka must be involved, but as his investigation brings him closer to a community of homeless kids, he discovers his privilege and naivete at the hierarchy of society beyond his apartment walls. As Mitya transitions into different phases of his identity, he’s also watching the ramifications of the country’s transition around him as his parents and grandmother are in and out of employment and his older friends discuss politics. “He felt small. Not in terms of age, or stature, but his whole existence suddenly felt insignificant. It seemed like the whole world was a web of sticky injustices that you couldn’t avoid at any turn.” In spite of these injustices, or perhaps in light of them, Mitya approaches everyone with love, and does what little he can to care for his loved ones, to seek justice for those less fortunate. Although he is young, the way Kazbek captures Mitya’s innocent perspective never comes across as naive, but rather kind, hopeful, and deeply empathetic.
For a coming-of-age tale, Little Foxes Took Up Matches manages to create a unique depiction of youth, self-discovery and gender identity without overly relying on the standard loss of innocence tropes. As the narrative explores Mitya’s understanding of the world and his place in it, Kazbek approaches heavy situations with genuine empathy and emotion that will sit with the reader long after the last page.
