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Kaprice Wilson
Sasha’s close childhood friend. Andrew is biologically born as Samantha, but he never feels comfortable inside a female body. Sasha helps to validate Andrew’s transgender identity after his therapist dismisses him, and Sasha gives him the courage to begin his gender transition. Andrew identifies as a gay man, but his keeps his “trans status on the down low” for fear of discrimination and violence. He watches as Sasha recovers from their attack on the 57 bus, and Andrew knows that threats of physical violence because of his gender are his “reality.” By the end of Slater’s book, Andrew begins to identify as genderqueer, but he is not comfortable stepping too far outside the gender binary. As a gay man, Andrew still fits somewhat into one of society’s accepted genders and he wants to keep it that way. “I’ve already been asked enough questions about my genitals,” he says.
Andrew / Samantha Quotes in The 57 Bus
The The 57 Bus quotes below are all either spoken by Andrew / Samantha or refer to Andrew / Samantha. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 1: Luke and Samantha
Quotes
It was part of the disorienting feeling she’d had for years, that feeling that everyone except her had been issued a handbook. Samantha knew it was important to be pretty and cute, but she had no idea how to be those things, or even why she was supposed to want to be. Her body was growing curvier. Breasts burst from her chest like twin cannonballs, but they didn’t feel sexy and good, they just felt heavy. She hid them under baggy T-shirts and sweatpants and watched the other girls come to school in tiny skirts and spaghetti straps, wondered why everything was so much hard for her than it was for them.
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Part 4: Andrew and the Binary
Quotes
“Actually,” [Andrew] said, “I’m starting to identify a little bit as—I don’t even know the word I want to use yet. I like androgynous. I like genderqueer.” What held him back? Fear. Fear of other people’s judgements, their questions, their hostility, their fascination. “Because I fall neatly within the binary, I feel comfortable right now,” he explained. “But if I were to radically shift my appearance in a way that more androgynous, I don’t know how comfortable that would be for me. I mean, I’ve already been asked enough questions about my genitals. I’m just done with that.”
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Andrew / Samantha Quotes in The 57 Bus
The The 57 Bus quotes below are all either spoken by Andrew / Samantha or refer to Andrew / Samantha. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 1: Luke and Samantha
Quotes
It was part of the disorienting feeling she’d had for years, that feeling that everyone except her had been issued a handbook. Samantha knew it was important to be pretty and cute, but she had no idea how to be those things, or even why she was supposed to want to be. Her body was growing curvier. Breasts burst from her chest like twin cannonballs, but they didn’t feel sexy and good, they just felt heavy. She hid them under baggy T-shirts and sweatpants and watched the other girls come to school in tiny skirts and spaghetti straps, wondered why everything was so much hard for her than it was for them.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: Andrew and the Binary
Quotes
“Actually,” [Andrew] said, “I’m starting to identify a little bit as—I don’t even know the word I want to use yet. I like androgynous. I like genderqueer.” What held him back? Fear. Fear of other people’s judgements, their questions, their hostility, their fascination. “Because I fall neatly within the binary, I feel comfortable right now,” he explained. “But if I were to radically shift my appearance in a way that more androgynous, I don’t know how comfortable that would be for me. I mean, I’ve already been asked enough questions about my genitals. I’m just done with that.”
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