Origami Striptease

by Peggy Munson

Origami Striptease is a lyrical love story between a writer and an enigmatic wanderer named Jack. The speaker of the novel is a feisty journalist of tell-all erotica who seduces borderland boys--trannies, butches, and daddies--and doesn t know how quickly she will inhabit the margins she writes about. Written mostly in iambic prose, Origami Striptease takes the reader on a wild ride into lost igloos, snow globes, sinister cakewalks, and a land of paper moose.

Genres: Queer, Fiction, Disability Studies

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Munson is the author of the novel, Origami Striptease, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. She also edited the anthology, Stricken: Voices from the Hidden Epidemic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She has published in such places as Best American Poetry 2003, Literature and Medicine, Marginalia, the Spoon River Poetry Review, Sinister Wisdom, 13th Moon, Blithe House Quarterly, Lodestar Quarterly, Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism, Best American Erotica, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Peggy has also been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, and Cottages at Hedgebrook.

Pathogenesis was a finalist or semifinalist for numerous prizes including the Dorset Prize, the Carnegie-Mellon Poetry Series, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Verse Prize, and the University of Wisconsin Pollack Prize. Bay Windows described Peggy as a "master of the written word," and Rebecca Brown dubbed her a "stylist extraordinaire." An Illinois native, Peggy now resides in the woods of Western Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read, but a rewarding one. There were moments of pure lyrical beauty. It was like reading one long poem -- the same feeling I get when I read Pynchon. But while Pynchon can't stick with a single character for long, Peggy Munson's entire novel stays largely with the narrator, a writer who dates (read "fucks") FTM (female-to-male transgender)"boys", and Jack, the FTM lover she may or may not have created out of ink and paper. There was an awful lot of misery and bravado, but there were passages of literate, gorgeous writing as well. To be able to sustain that level of density and intensity for two hundred pages is itself something of a minor miracle. Read it if you believe Kafka: "A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul." Not for the faint of heart, but well worth the fracturing of ice.

[Katie Garcia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a novel chosen by a lesbian book club that I joined. I feel like all I do is crap on the books I read, but seriously this woman used a metaphor in every sentence and it made me a little ill.

[Gem · Rating 3 out of 5]

A confusing book but worth the read as it is filled with beautiful imagery, words and tales. A great genderqueer book!