#agender character

When I was young and full of feelings I didn’t know how to share, when I was afraid nobody would understand me, I found a language everybody knows. Sugar, flour, butter. The comfort of a perfect cookie, the joy of a celebration cake, the bittersweet importance of chocolate. I put everything in my heart into my baking. Years later, I lost the one person who I thought would see me and love me for exactly who I am — and the magic started up again. This has always been my way of sharing what I feel. Especially when things get hard.

The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta is a contemporary LGBTQ+ YA with a dash of magical realism as teenage baker Syd realizes crafting food is more about feelings than one might expect. Syd’s creations at work or home aren’t just an outlet or inspire the usual emotions— they’re saturated with them. Concoctions sometimes irresistible and consuming one can make sentiments under the surface rise to the top in Syd and others, having at times very intense effects.

Though I’m older than the target demographic this story is like an expertly flavored recipe with baking, passion, community, culture, and change. One of the cutest parts is also recipes for various baked goods or occasion guides that head each chapter. From simple Breakup Brownies in the beginning to more elaborate Agender Cupcakes, and Today’s Gender or A Big Gay Bakeout days it’s a fun distinctive touch. I decided to try the Get Comfy with Your Great Big Feelings Cookies because the book basically stirred up the same. Syd is a welcome addition to my list of books with agender bisexual characters.

I get big feelings anytime the subject of gender and vaporous clouds come up…

“I have to find a way to help them understand me, even though I don’t really understand them either. Having a gender? Why? Feeling like your body and who you are inside line up all the time? How? Identifying with other folks of your assigned gender as a kid, when I identified with things like extra-fluffy cumulus clouds and nebulas? What does that even feel like? I get nervous trying to explain myself sometimes. I get tired. I grow sharp edges where I didn’t think I had any. And I definitely get to the point where I just want to bury myself in baking and not deal with any of it.”

Too the Proud Muffin Bakery and its owners, staff and customers make up a diverse and resilient rainbow in the Texas capital. (Special mention to the pansexual drag queen military veteran turned barista, D.C.) Truly there are so many great passages worth marking and quoting. Including some of the cream of the crop of food related analogies I’ve read in a while. For example:

“Sometimes I come up with these little recipes … like, gender recipes. For how I want to look or feel that day.” I might be an agender cupcake, but I have to live in a world where most things have been flavored with gender. Even when I was little, I mixed and played and had fun with those flavors. I showed up to second-grade picture day in a pink skirt with neon yellow suspenders and a blue plaid tie. I made it through most of eighth grade in big unlaced work boots, black tights, and overall shorts. And then there’s my baking uniform: guys’ baggy jeans, a binder or sports bra under a fitted Tshirt and a bright sunny apron.

Or“Our motto is love comes in every flavor.”

Though for as much as I love and do praise this precious book, it’s not potentially without a little distasteful bite. This most prominently involves an event in chapter seven. There are a few things I think need examined when it comes to continuity but also consent. For the spoiler version read over here.

Honestly the entire basis of this book is that Syd does not know how the magical baking exactly works, is controlled, or always uses proper mindfulness when making something. Fundamentally, the whole aspect of magical baking does create moral and ethical questions that infuse the whole novel. The handling of such can and will be debated by readers. (Particularly in the instance I chose to highlight.) But I would still judge The Heartbreak Bakery as a delicious and inspiring LGBTQ+ YA book with an agender main character in a contemporary setting.

The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta is available in print and digital (including audio) from Candlewick Press

i had a thought, dear, however scary, about that night, the bugs and the dirt

why were you digging? what did you bury, before your hands pulled me from the earth?