Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT Leroy

by Savannah Knoop, Kristen Stewart (Narrator)

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Kristen Stewart (as JT) and Laura Dern.

The JT LeRoy scandal is a story of our times. In January 2006, the New York Times unmasked Savannah Knoop as the face of the mysterious author JT LeRoy. A media frenzy ensued as JT's fans, mentors, and readers came to terms with the fact that the gay-male-ex-truck-stop-prostitute-turned literary-wunderkind was really a girl from San Francisco, whose sister-in-law wrote the books.
Girl Boy Girl is the story of how Savannah Knoop led this bizarre double life for six years, trading a precarious existence as a college dropout for a life in which she was embraced by celebrities and artists--Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Mary Ellen Mark, Winona Ryder, Asia Argento, Sharon Olds, Gus Van Sant, Mike Pitt, Calvin Klein, and Shirley Manson, to name a few--and traveled the world. Telling her side of the story for the first time, Savannah reveals how being perceived as a boy gave her a sense of confidence and entitlement she never had before. Her love affair with Asia Argento is particularly wrenching, as they embark on an intimate relationship that causes more alienation than closeness.
As Savannah and Laura struggle over control of the JT character, Savannah realizes the limits of the game - - and inadvertently finds herself through the adventure of being someone else.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Biography, LGBT, Queer, Gender

Audiobook

First published August 26, 2008

About the author

Savannah Knoop is a NY-based artist, and writer. From 2009-2016 Knoop co-hosted the monthly queer audio-visual party WOAHMONE. They received their BA at CunyBa under the mentorship of Vito Acconci, and their MFA at Virginia CommonWealth University in Sculpture+Extended Media. They have shown and performed at the Whitney, MoMA, the ICA Philadelphia, the Leslie Lohman Museum, David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami, and Nicelle Beauchene in New York.

In 2007, they published their memoir Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy (Seven Stories Press) and adapted it into a screenplay, co-producing the resulting feature-length film JT Leroy (Universal Pictures, 2019) directed by Justin Kelly, and starring Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern. Alongside Brontez Purnell, Knoop is working to adapt his novel, Since I Laid My Burden Down, into a feature length film of the same title.

Knoop has written essays for the LA Review of Books, 032C, Dazed, Critical Correspondence, and Cultured Magazine.

Reviews

[James Tracy]

Jesus F. Christ, you gotta give this woman credit for sheer audacity. I'm not sure what's more stomach wrenching--her shamelessly taking on the "poor junkie hustler boy" persona or the dozens of lame-ass gliterati who needed to celebrate one to make their own miserable rich fuck lives more meaningful.

And you know what? There's plenty of real street kids writing real stories everyday. Check out Roaddawgs magazine out of SF's Tenderloin for the real deal. Think these kids are gonna have Carrie Fisher wanting to pay their bills? Nope. Think any publisher is going to take a risk on them in the wake of hurricane JT? I don't think so.

Once upon a time, if a middle-class person wanted to write a story about poor folks, they did so and had the honesty to call it fiction, not memoir.

[Lord Beardsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be very brave and interesting. I know that a lot of people are really critical of her motives for writing it, but I really don't see any of those behind what she conveys in the book. I know that people say she just misses the fame, etc., but I think she would be the first to admit it that, yes, she does mourn not having this anymore. In fact, she often mourned this when she was still living as JT Leroy and herself. I think it's very interesting how she brings up how much easier things are when you're a wunderkind/child wonder boy than if you were a girl. This is something that I often thought about after the whole LeRoy debocle cleared a bit. She shows how trite and double-standard life is when you're a celebrated young boy than just "some girl". She also managed to depict people very clearly as they really probably acted without being exploitive or vulgar. When people were good, they were good, when they were grotesque they were grotesque, but nothing relyed on sensationalism. I was prepared to come away from this book being utterly annoyed by Laura Albert but found her to be a very complex and damaged human being who sincerely believed in what she was doing as an outlet for her art. At one point she is quoted as saying in regards to how often she was snubbed as a child for her talents *she wasn't a pretty little girl or a good little girl who people paid attention to* "I realized I would always have to work double time."

I found this book to be a fascinating account of the dubious nature of hype, celebrity, and gender. About the longing for validation, about success, vanity, and self-loathing. Who among us has never wanted to be someone else, if not just for one brief moment? Who of us would turn down an opportunity to check out of our boring lives (at least for a moment) and live one filled with jet-setting, success, money, fame and glamour? If you want to know what actually living this fantasy would be like as well as all the ways fame and identity and lies can hurt not only the victims, but also the criminals, go read this. It's written from a true place.

[Anderse · Rating 1 out of 5]

Books like these are why I never seem to have the time to read the classics. The time I've wasted reading and watching movies based on non fiction that turns out to be pure fiction. (I'm looking at you, James Frey.)
I am fascinated by autobiographical books that are outed as fakes. Burns my butter to see them still in the Non-fiction section of the library after all this time though....
Anyway, the story behind this story isn't too interesting. Yeah, she got to meet famous people while posing as JT, got to travel a lot, etc. The tale got bogged down by bad writing (even though I expected this) and pages and pages about her conflicted feelings of her love life and self harming that had nothing to do with the JT LeRoy experience. She made her audience into her therapist and I don't think I take her insurance.

[usagi ☆ミ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seem to be the only one who enjoyed this memoir. That's a shame, because even if it's not exactly the most linear in terms of how the whole JT Leroy debacle came up, it's still a peek into her head on how she was taken for the ride of her life.

Give the book a chance, guys.

[Juliette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Laura Albert is a literary genius. Her nom de plume (JT Leroy) scandal rocked certain peoples' worlds apart. This memoir is written by her ex-sister-in-law who played JT Leroy in public. JT Leroy was Laura Albert's nom de plume. I loved reading about Savannah-as-JT's love affair with Asia Argento, the Hollywood travels and tales, and the debut of the Asia Argento film which was adpated from a JT book at Cannes. Ultimately, this is Laura's Story, and Savannah's version only seems like a tiny part. I can't wait to read more by Laura Albert and hear her side of everything. Also, Savannah was sort of awful to Albert when she could have been amazing. The ending just sort of trailed off, and left a lot of info out.

[J.C. · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story of J.T. LeRoy is long and complex and is not chronicled within the pages of this book. It's her side of the story and her side only.

Having read a J.T. LeRoy book, I was a little curious about the "scandal" that erupted. After reading this book I could care less. It might have been a scandal, but it was only scandalous to the "artsy-fartsy-protectors of-all-things-sacred in-the-art-world" crowd. the real world could care less.

The only redeeming thing about this book was when Carrie Fisher shows up.

[Meg · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't even finish it. Not only did I feel deceived the entire time, but Savannah Knoop takes no personal responsibility and is a terrible writer. The book was flat out boring. Maybe if her sister-in-law had written it...

[Sue Online · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ahhhhh….. where to start, where to start. It is the sad story of two women so in hate with themselves they choose to be someone else… a drug-addicted, HIV positive, sexually abused, ex-prostitute transsexual. I mean sure, it looks glamorous when you write it out like that, but two women pretending to be the same young gay guy? You have to know it will end badly.

The author of this book, Savannah Knoop, is one of the girls in the title. The other girl is Laura Albert. And the boy is JT Leroy (that’s Leh–roy, not Lee-roy).

Laura creates JT as a form of writer’s therapy, a persona for her fictional work. Savannah acts as JT during book signings, when meeting movie stars, when getting freebies from people, sleeping with actresses… you know, all that glamorous stuff that drug-addicted, HIV positive, sexually abused, ex-prostitute transsexual authors get to do.
I fell asleep a few times while reading. And while it could just be that I am old and tired, you’d think that a book about a lesbian pretending to be a gay guy who is transitioning into a girl would be interesting enough to keep an old gal like me awake.

Savannah’s story will be more interesting if she tells it again in 20 years. By then she might have some cultural and socio-political understanding of her actions and others’ reactions, and incorporate that into the story, and into lesbian herstory. Right now, it’s just a story. Give it some maturity, depth and feminist insight, and it might be brilliant.

[Meg Kenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to read this garbled, self serving, inauthentic piece of trash. Really I did. I wanted to be open minded about the motives of someone who would willingly go along with a lie about the, frankly, soul destroying life of a boy who is systematically abused and violated at every turn and then, to add insult to injury, fakes an AIDS diagnosis to cover up said lie. These things happen, so Savannah Knoop would have you believe, almost by accident. What is even more galling about the conduct of this 'poor, naive' woman is that she is now trying to claim that the only reason she took part in one of the worst, most pointless literary hoaxes in living memory is because she has 'poor self esteem'. Well, I'm sure we all know that the best way to cure low self esteem is to fabricate a life, mislead people, fleece them out their money and time and then write a book about how you did it. Much healthier than seeing a therapist. The only thing worse than what she and her sociopathic sister in law did, is her total refusal to take responsibility for it. I made it to chapter 2, after reading about the sex crime she committed against Asia Argento (yes I do think lying to someone about your gender and indeed your very personhood to deceive then into having sex with you is a sex crime....) and then her assertion that Michael Pitt was desperate to sleep with her, I gave up before I ripped the book in half. Take my advice, don't waste your time or your money on this.

[Akiva ꙮ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting high drama and excitement, but got anxiety and confusion. Maybe more accurate in some ways, but the result was surprisingly slow-paced and not as fun to read as I'd hoped. The outing had a lot of potential to spice up the book, but instead of drawing it out and going deep into the messiness, Knoop ends the book suddenly after barely a chapter.

Also not that insightful unfortunately. Not surprisingly I was most interested in the Gender of it all, especially since Knoop later came out as nonbinary, but there's almost no understanding demonstrated in the book itself. The things that the book doesn't understand about gender are a whole other kind of interesting: I think there's a scholarly essay in what on earth S&L were trying to get at by making JT a "t****y" (yeah, warning, that word gets thrown around), and how all the other famous people around JT understood JT's gender, because clearly they thought they did? I guess it's just a snapshot of cis projections on/about trans women, but man are those strange.

[Imogen]

Man, y'know, I thought I was interested. I liked the JT Leroy fiasco! I was in a weird place when I read those books, though, and I'm terrified to go back and re-read them 'cause they might be totally stupid. (Though I totally don't care about policing authenticity in authorship. Have we forgotten the structuralists so soon, just because structuralism doesn't really work?)

So yeah. I thought this would be interesting, so I read the first chapter or two. Early on there's a bit where she and Asia Argento walk by a park and she sees the authentic realness in the eyes of the hustlers and 'trannys' (PUKE PUKE PUKE) and feels jealous. Oddly, it ended up sitting in my bag for a week after that and I couldn't muster the interest to keep reading.

Oh well, whatever. I'm not gonna give it a revengeatory one-star, 'cause I barely got twenty pages into it, but I will give it an enormous 'whatever.'

[Katy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite frankly, this is a loathsome book about loathsome people without remorse or redeeming qualities. Knopp writes about her actions as though they were done to her, but that’s hardly the case. Knopp’s abusive behaviour and lies are the foundation of this book and it reads like sad, sick exploitation theatre. She degrades the most vulnerable people’s experiences by posing as this mountain of lies. Would give it zero stars if I could.

[Davinia Muque · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿Sabéis eso de que la realidad siempre supera a la ficción? Pues este libro encarna a la perfección ese dicho. Yo no tenía ni idea de que esta fascinante historia hubiese ocurrido realmente (de verdad, repito, la realidad supera la ficción....

A finales de los noventa, un escritor nuevo comenzó a causar sensación en la escena literaria norteamericana. Uno de los motivos de ese furor, es que nadie sabía quién era exactamente. Recibió apoyo de famosos y conocidos (Carrie Fisher, Bono, Courtney Love, Asia Argento...) haciendo lecturas de sus libros.

La historia del autor no es nada fácil. Fue criado por una madre prostituta y drogadicta en un apeadero de caminos en el sur de Estados Unidos. Cambió de sexo y fue considerado un escritor maldito por todas las desgracias que le habían rodeado a lo largo de su vida. Como es lógico, en este mundo tan morboso, la historia de J.T Leroy fue el centro de los focos pero, finalmente, la verdad salió a la luz: todo había sido un engaño. J.T Leroy nunca había existido. Durante seis años, Savannah Knoop acudió a festivales literarios y se codeó con las celebrities haciéndose pasar por él. ¿Cómo te quedas? Muerta y matá.

Pero todo va más allá: Savannah Knoop se hizo pasar por el atormentado escritor J.T Leroy porque su cuñada en aquel momento, Laura Albert, se lo pidió. ¿Y quién era ella? Pues la autora de las novelas del autor. Un relato digno de película que, si no estoy mal informada, ya existe o la van a rodar.

Chica, chico, chica es el relato de la propia Savannah Knoop en el que narra las vivencias e historias que le sucedieron haciéndose pasar por J.T Leroy casi a tiempo completo durante años. Si me paro a pensarlo, no sé cómo no llegó a sufrir alguna crisis de identidad o alguna enfermedad mental (puede que ya la trajese de casa...).

Me he encantado esta lectura. Entretenida, adictiva y cuidada. Se nota la edición de Alpha Decay que siempre es un acierto.

Gracias a la editorial por esta colaboración.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A história é muito, muito, muito doida. Não é um livro que chamaria a minha atenção normalmente, mas a narração da Kristen Stewart no audiobook me trouxe até aqui. Amei ela fazendo os sotaques e as vozes diferentes para as personagens. Amei ela falando português no capítulo de Copacabana. Nunca pensei que a ouviria dizendo palavras como Capoeira, Gororoba e Batatinha.

Em relação a Savannah, senti pena dela, pois deu pra perceber que era uma pessoa muito perdida, que vivia um momento muito difícil de sua vida, e acabou sendo influenciada de uma maneira errada pela Laura. Ela nunca deveria ter topado entrar nessa loucura de fingir ser outra pessoa. A mentira só foi crescendo, crescendo, tornando a vida dela ainda mais sufocante e sem saídas. É tudo muito errado e triste de ver.

Não é um livro maravilhoso, mas em audiobook deu pra encarar numa boa!

[Heather(Gibby) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I have been living under a pop culture rock, but I had never heard of JT Leroy or the whole impersonation hoax before I stumbled across this book. It was quite a fascinating read, and took me down an internet hole.

[Kerri Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book deeply unsatisfying. And yet, it shouldn't have been. To impersonate a teenage, male, previously drug addicted street prostitute takes balls, especially when you're a girl, ha ha. But you get absolutely no sense of that in this book. With all the adventures that Ms Knoop experienced as she impersonated J T LeRoy, a creation of her sister in law, Laura Albert, no excitement, fear, anxiety, comes through AT ALL. I could be reading my grocery list. I had watched the movie of this book before I read it (don't bother), and I should have been forewarned. If JT LeRoy actually acted out like that in real life, it's cringe-worthy. The incomprehensible mumbling, the head hanging, the inane things 'he' said... my god, it says a lot about the people who were willing to believe that this kid was real. To me, they thought, no doubt subconsciously, that they would get some reflected glory by knowing someone who supposedly had lived such a dark, sordid, sleazy life. It reminds me of the fact that a lot of straight living people are envious of others who have lived a 'sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll' lifestyle. Believe me, there is nothing glamorous about it at all; I speak from sad experience. Anyway, to get back to the book, not only does the reader not get a true sense of what it was like to be this impersonator, but there is no insight into the person who actually wrote the J T LeRoy books, Laura Albert. I was hoping to find out exactly why Ms Albert was so desperate to hide her real identity. Why, early on, when the books became successful, did she not step out and say 'I'm the author'? I do know from watching her documentary 'The JT LeRoy Story', that she felt no one would be interested in her writing if they knew that she was an overweight thirty-something unemployed female; however, the hoax she perpetrated was, in itself, quite interesting, and she could have owned up to being the interesting creator, but, to the very end, she tried to hide that fact. As Ms Knoop was the closest to Ms Albert in this deception, who better, I thought, than she to know why this was so and to shed light on it? Well, she didn't, not at all. We do get a sketchy portrait of Ms Albert, but no real insight. Perhaps, if a reader comes to this book without any specific curiosity such as I had, it may be interesting, but I was left, as I say, deeply unsatisfied.

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the movie so much I bought the book. Easy and quick to read and just a really interesting story. Knoop doesn't excuse any behaviour , but more explores the situation and that experience of being stuck in something you want to get out of but not knowing how. Also how if you're damaged anyway , these experiences are kind of easy to end up in. Asia Argento does NOT come off well in this book. Oh, I'm also going to go in with - this book was written a little while ago and probably wouldn't be written like this now - the author has done a new introduction where they state they are non- binary but didnt have the language for that when writing the book. And I also think there are examples of how language has changed in this book and what was acceptable maybe then, now isn't.

[Bridget · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was going to just c + v the lyric's to "Professional Widow" here but then I thought... not worth the time to google the full song.
It was interesting to see the story from the inside out. (I make no bones about being a big JT Leroy fan and wrestling with the same issues of "did i like the book because it was a good book? Or did I like it because I bought into the victim-hood of the author?") At least it would have been interesting if that was what this book was. It was not. It was primarily a celebrity kiss-ass fest. Which isn't a big enough departure from the cult of JT to be worth 200+ pages.

[Ocean · Rating 4 out of 5]

unlike many of the haters, i found this book enjoyable & interesting, another perspective on the JT leroy scandal. i dug savannah's writing style; she has a unique take on things, an eye for strange interesting details and an ear for dialogue. (i've been telling everyone about how laura albert explained butt plugs to a clueless relative: "it's like a little christmas tree you put up your butt!")
it was a little bit strange & non-linear but i think that's just how she is as a person.
i would have liked to read more about the aftermath & what she's doing now.

[Malvolio · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know. I thought it was interesting in regards to the whole scandal...but i felt really underwhelmed and sad....like, if someone is going to be that dramatic and scandalous, and get away with such a fun scam...is it too much to ask for that they be likeable and exciting too? The days of Errol Flynn are over methinks. I was just kind of bored.

[Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

i skipped so many pages of this. largely because i don't care that j.t. leroy is not real. i still loved the books.

plus, i still think Dennis Cooper is really behind the whole thing. and if he is not, i would rather hear Laura's story than Savannah's.

[Brittani · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not the best written book out there but it's still a very good read. I'm glad Savannah found her voice, I feel Laura often tries to deny her that so she can craft her own narrative about how the entire JT Leroy facade went down. Savannah's POV is interesting.

[Daniel Levesque · Rating 1 out of 5]

UGH. I wanted so much more info. A hopeful attempt, at best. I want LAURA to write a tell-all. This told me nothing new. Lots of adverbs.

[Jaimini Mehta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not amazing but not awful. It did make me want to read The Heart.... again though :)

[Pandaduh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The conversations around JT LeRoy are yet to call out Albert as the Rachael Dolezal for trans people, and that's why I think this story continues to baffle me. Perhaps Albert is trans, in the umbrella sense of the word, if she feels like LeRoy is part of her, and that (perhaps?) complicates the issue even more for criticism. But that's why I read this book -- to get a better thought process about her "avatar" (what Albert still calls JT) from Knoop's perspective. An "avatar" is not a character in a book, though, or even a pen name. "Avatar" is still not the right word. In some respects, JT LeRoy feels ghostwritten, which I have a negative view on. It's inauthentic, at the end of the day. But those who are ghostwritten for tend to exist where JT did not, so that's where the comparison ends. To be nitpicky, JT LeRoy was not the avatar, Knoop was. The rest is all persona and acting and claiming an identity that really doesn't feel like it was Albert's to do in the way she did.

Knoop, on the other hand, was forced to embody what Albert created. If you know about the story, the embodying did not fit. Reading this made me feel like Knoop is still exploring their identity at the time of writing it -- that this book was an exercise in recording who they were and who they are at a moment in time so they can have solid ground to stand on going forward. Before going into this, I knew that Knoop's pronoun was now "they" and had read from the BBC that:

'..."one interesting point of similarity between Knoop as LeRoy and Knoop now, aside from an eclectic taste in fashion, is that Knoop has gravitated towards LeRoy’s gender fluidity – stopping using the pronoun ‘she’ and now going by the gender neutral ‘they’. “They is a made-up word, and I like how confusing and uncomfortable it is,” says Knoop. “I went to grad school and there were all these young kids who in some way were post-gender and they all go by ‘they’.”'

So this renders the title a bit irrelevant or at least slightly awkward, since Knoop might again no longer identify as (or embody?) a "girl." It seems their identity exploration is not over yet, and I wish Knoop would have included that fact more outright but I did not get a good sense of it. Otherwise, you assume Knoop is OK with "she" or being gendered as a "girl." I was hoping for a little bit more retroactive analyzing on Knoop's part for how JT LeRoy was still called "He" during the events recounted here despite JT "identifying" as trans. Like, maybe more talk about how, if this stunt was done today, more care or definition might go to XYZ like in pronoun usage and etc. Yet again, maybe "trans" is for the umbrella sense of the word, which would include non-binary and gender neutral identities as well, so I accept it either way. I've not read any of Albert's books so I don't know if that's addressed there. Plus, there are a few specific examples where "genderfluid" is mentioned up as what JT is shooting for (yet it doesn't seem to be THE identity like "trans" is) so maybe Knoop did not feel the need to address it further. I of course realize that at the time our definitions were (and are still) evolving but today those terms are not so interchangeable. However, there are also other examples where it's as if there's a very exact definition of "trans-ness" they were trying to project. It's a projection where, today, we do have better language to describe what was (possibly?) going on but Knoop simply does not address it even though they have access to said language. Going off that BBC quote, it feels like Knoop missed an opportunity to look back and claim their "interpretation" or "embodiment" of LeRoy as really having/deserving a gender neutral pronoun. I think my confusion highlights this lack of clarification and exploration enough.

This book should be in conversations with ones like, for example, #OwnVoices. The lines in the sand for what you can and can't do were blurred with this stunt and I think we're missing opportunities to define (if we even need to define? maybe reinforce, rather?) who and what an "author" is. What Laura Albert did was most wrong, in my view. What Knoop went through was not OK. Yet, like Knoop, I still don't think we have the precise language to talk about it. But we need to continue to try.

[EA Solinas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tale of J. T. Leroy is a fascinating one - a wispy, tragic, sexually/gender-fluid former drug-addict/child prostitute who crafted bestselling books based on his life. He became a cult figure for several years... until it was discovered that he didn't actually exist, and the books sprang from the imagination of his manager Laura Albert.

But a crucial part of the whole affair was Savannah Knoop, the young woman who pretended to be Leroy for public appearances - she donned a blonde wig, a Southern accent and an androgynous wardrobe to play a painfully shy it-author. And in "Girl Boy Girl: How I Became J. T. Leroy," Knoop explores the years she spent living a double life, and the struggles she experienced, both as her real and fictional selves. The writing is a little rough-edged, but she gives some fascinating glimpses behind the curtain of this 21st-century literary hoax.

Savannah Knoop presents herself as a rather atypical young woman - adrift after boarding school, she began working in a Thai restaurant with no idea "what I was going to do with my life." She also suffered from bulimia, and struggled with her body image (such as hairy legs) even as she achieved a kind of perfect androgyny.

She first encountered Laura Albert when the woman began dating her brother Geoff Knoop - a writer/singer/phone sex worker with a knack for making herself the center of attention. Laura created the personal of "Terminator" - later J. T. Leroy - and wrote two books based on his fictional life as the son of a truck-stop prostitute. After unsuccessfully searching for someone to "impersonate" J. T., Laura enlisted Savannah to don the disguise. She bound her breasts, donned a wig and a raccoon penis bone, and pretended to be a shy young artist.

But though she expected it to be a one-off service to her sister-in-law, she soon found herself playing J. T. many more times - meetings with Gus Van Sant, Mike Pitt and Asia Argento, celebrity friendships, expensive restaurants, travel to places like Italy and Japan, movie set visits, film festivals and so on. As she spirals deeper into the illusion of J. T. Leroy, relationships become strained and the entire hoax is threatened with exposure - including Savannah herself.

There's something deeply fascinating to me about the entire J. T. Leroy affair, and "Girl Boy Girl" sheds some light on how a simple alter ego became something more tangible, more "real." At the same time, it also gives the reader insights into Savannah Knoop's thoughts during the whole period, and the effect it had on her and her self-image (she compares "being" Leroy to a love affair). She blossoms slowly like a moonflower, despite the shadow cast by J. T., and gradually becomes less shy and more authentically herself.

And as Knoop explores her double life, she also explores her self-esteem issues and the slow flowering of her own identity, such as her gradual movement into fashion design or her trip to Brazil. The entire masquerade as J. T. Leroy clearly was not a healthy experience for her on many levels (she describes developing a dysmorphic reaction to her own breasts), but it's not hard to feel the addictive thrill of playing a dramatic character who mesmerized so many people, and living a life removed from her own mundane experiences.

And while Knoop may not be a J. T. Leroy as a writer, she does have some flair for the written word. The introductory chapter about sex with Argento is kind of purple-prosy, but she has a knack for bringing color and a sense of surreality to her experiences as J. T. ("Doomed baby jellyfish reflected the cold winter sun"). However, she struggles to convey the passage of time, as the book spans several years, and the narrative sort of crashes to a halt after the revelation of the hoax. I would have liked to see a little more of her feelings and experiences after the deception was exposed.

Full of strange anecdotes and a sense of delicate surreality, "Girl Boy Girl" is a fascinating if flawed glimpse into a 21st-century literary hoax, and the inner workings of a young woman's mind as she literally lives a lie. If nothing else, see it before the movie comes out.

[Ash · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't know anything about JT Leroy going into this; mostly I read it because I have a bad case of covid and an old audio ARC. The whole JTL thing, now that I know more, makes me viscerally uncomfortable although I can't quite say why. I have a fluid view of gender and gender experimentation, I like drag, I've read about a ton of other scammers with something closer to mild interest. Maybe some of the discomfort was with myself, because had I realized that this was just another money making layer of the scam I probably wouldn't have started reading it.

There is a level where you can look at all of this as some form of art, however unethical, but I find philosophical conversations about the boundaries of performance art somewhat self-important and very boring. I'm more interested in the ways that the hoax ties into conversations we're still having about literature today - who gets to write about marginalized people, and why do we think that? There is a (perhaps growing) idea that marginalized people are now given WAY more opportunities in publishing than nonmarginalized people although that's absolutely not true; we maybe hear from more marginalized people now than we used to but they're still underrepresented and largely don't reap the same financial benefits of their nonmarginalized peers.

Of course that's why it's so irritating that two white women from San Francisco carried on this ruse for so long. But this isn't even a new read on the situation. This is from the article Beachy published in the early two thousands, speculating that JTL wasn't who he said he was:

"And perhaps no other culture has valued the contrived happy ending as much as ours. For all its abuse and kinky sex, the JT story is really just another heartwarming rags-to-riches tale for the punk generation. But what if America isn’t really the sort of place where a street urchin can charm his way to the top, through diligence and talent; what if instead it’s the sort of place where heartwarming stories of abused children who triumph through adversity are made up and marketed?" -Beachy, https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people...

And so I don't want to rehash it too much, although the temptation is there because I love a literary scandal and this one is absurd.

Instead I'll focus on this book specifically which I found lacking. It's primarily a rote retelling of events from Savannah's POV with a small glimpse into how she claims to have felt at the time and several body hair related diversions. It ends on what is supposed to be a hopeful note, when Savannah decides to finally live truly as herself, but it falls a bit flat. I can't tell how much responsibility she feels like she has for how things unfolded; I have no sense of how she feels about it now or if she would do it again.

I spent most of my adolescence online, and parts of this resonated - I had friends who turned out not to be who they had said that they were. And I've had friends with powerful personalities who can seem to pull you into a reality that isn't quite real. I would have enjoyed this more had Savannah explored those or other topics about how or why this happened, rather than just focusing on what she did and complaining that it's hard to live a double life and detailing her various hair removal treatments.

ETA you know the other thing that got me about this were the very surface level "people don't take you seriously if you're a woman" interjections. Like there is a criticism to be levelled at the way we want to consume the stories of people worse off than ourselves but I think "it's easier being a sex trafficked child who's a boy than it is being a girl who lives in her parents loft" is really not making the right argument.

[Thing Two · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holy wow. I’d never heard of JT Leroy, so was completely in the dark at the beginning of this memoir, but it is a fascinating tale.

First, background: The author’s brother’s girlfriend, Laura Albert, wrote a series of “memoirs” about a young boy named JT Leroy from West Virginia whose mother is a truck stop prostitute. Leroy becomes a prostitute himself, and eventually finds his way to California, calls in to a talk-show therapist who suggests Leroy write to heal his soul, and voila, these best-selling books are published—as memoirs, not the fiction they actually are.

During the heyday of popularity, the real author, Albert, pressed a young Savannah Knoop into dressing up for the role of JT for a photo shoot. One thing led to another, and suddenly ,six years later, they are at Cannes for the premier of the documentary based on the memoirs. Oops!

The actual author of the books—who plays JT’s British handler “Speedy” during the 6 year span—has been the feature of her own documentary, where she is able to tell the story of how and why. This book is the actor who played JT—in real life and the Cannes documentary—to tell her side of the story.

Got it? Good. If you’re interested in a short weird story of some very weird people, this is your book.

[Amanda Clarke · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are a couple of good anecdotes here, but it's mostly just navel gazing and name dropping. The interesting part of the story, why Savannah Knoop agreed to pretend to be JT Leroy, is mostly glossed over. Maybe Knoop doesn't know, but there would be an interesting story in that as well. Or at least an interesting psychoanalysis. There is also something in the obsession that the celebrity world had with Leroy and the fallout from the reveal. This is also largely ignored.

Instead, we get a series of poorly organized vignettes, most of which focus on Knoops obsession with Asia Argento. There is little self awareness here or even interest in diving into psychology. Lots here doesn't connect and much just sounds like whining.

I can understand that what would have made this an excellent memoir is deeply personal and vulnerable. However, if Knoop didn't want to go there (and they shouldn't have to it they didn't want to), then they shouldn't have written this book. As is, it feels like a lazy cash grab, capitalizng on an elaborate lie that got Knoop close to big name celebrities that can be exploited.

This could have been great. Instead, it is a narcissistic, self portrait that exploits its celebrity connections with little thought.

[Gabriel Avocado · Rating 1 out of 5]

this is a one star because its horrifically overwritten and boring. i hate 'boring' as a criticism but if youre picking up this book then you know the absolutely far out story behind it. savannah knoop manages to make a story of deception and scamming your way into book and movie deals by stealing peoples stories into a fucking snoozefest. ive seen people calling her a literary genius and a great writer but shes not engaging at all. in a way i can see why she didnt really have any issue lying about who she is. her writing is solipsistic, self obsessed, incurious, and navel gazing. sorry this is so harsh but i swear ive tried to get through this for months and its simply impenetrably dull.