-
Cactus Country
- A Boyhood Memoir
- Narrated by: Zoë Bossiere
- Length: 9 hrs
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pre-order for $24.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
A stunningly written literary memoir about gender-fluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author’s experience growing up in a trailer park outside of Tucson, Arizona
Cactus Country is a literary coming-of-age memoir tracing the intersections of trans identity, class, and the landscape of the American Southwest. Set in a trailer park outside Tucson, Arizona, the book tells the story of a young gender-fluid person growing up against the dramatic natural backdrop of the Sonoran Desert.
We meet Zoë as an 11-year-old moving through a world of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled palo verde trees. Although Zoë lacks the vocabulary to express it, they experience life as a trans boy, spending summers running in a pack of other sunburnt hoodlums and school years fending off classmates’ intrusive questions about the body underneath their baggy clothes.
As Zoë enters adolescence, they are exposed to the hard masculinity that so many of Cactus Country RV Park’s working-class residents embody, and are increasingly troubled by the prospect of growing up to resemble the often sexist, racist, and violent men around them. Meanwhile, outside the trailer park, the fraught intimacies of first love give way to a traumatic sexual experience that further destabilizes Zoë’s sense of self. Zoë stops resisting femininity, but cannot escape the persistent threats associated with moving through the world in a gendered body—or the feeling that their particular relationship to that body is fraught. Still, a spark persists, leading the young adult Zoë to leave Cactus Country for college, ultimately becoming one of very few to embrace whatever awaits beyond.
Equal parts harsh and tender, Cactus Country is an invitation for listeners to consider how we find our place in a world that insists on stark binaries, and a precisely rendered journey of self-determination that will resonate with anyone who’s ever had to fight to be themself.
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Kittentits
- A Novel
- By: Holly Wilson
- Narrated by: Stephanie Willing
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1992, and ten-year-old Molly is tired of living in the fire-rotted, nun-haunted House of Friends: a Semi-Cooperative Living Community of Peace Faith(s) in Action with her formerly blind dad and their grieving housemate Evelyn. But when twenty-three-year-old Jeanie, a dirt bike-riding ex-con with a shady past, moves in, she quickly becomes the object of Molly’s adoration. She might treat Molly terribly, but they both have dead moms and potty mouths, so naturally Molly is the moth to Jeanie’s scuzzy flame.
By: Holly Wilson
-
Exhibit
- A Novel
- By: R. O. Kwon
- Narrated by: Ami Park, Sue Jean Kim
- Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
By: R. O. Kwon
-
Housemates
- A Novel
- By: Emma Copley Eisenberg
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Bernie replies to Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography. After Bernie’s former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania.
-
-
Gratitude for some good queer love
- By EJW on 06-02-24
-
Here for the Wrong Reasons
- By: Annabel Paulsen, Lydia Wang
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson, Lindsey Dorcus
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Krystin knows exactly what she wants: a husband, a horse, and a place to hang all her competitive rodeo blue ribbons. But when none of the eligible bachelors in Montana end up being right for her, she turns to reality TV. On Hopelessly Devoted, Krystin will compete against dozens of other women for the heart of this season’s Hopeless Romantic, Josh Rosen. She’s determined to win the perfect life she came here for—if she can just ignore the glossy brunette whose crimson smile gives her goosebumps.
-
-
Great Writing and Story
- By Anonymous User on 05-24-24
By: Annabel Paulsen, and others
-
How We Are
- The How to Live Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Vincent Deary
- Narrated by: Matthew Brenher
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How We Are is an astonishing debut and the first part of the monumental How to Live trilogy, a profound and ambitious work that gets to the heart of what it means to be human: how we are, how we break, and how we mend. This first audiobook explores the power of habit and the difficulty of change. We live most of our lives automatically, in small worlds of comfortable routine - what author Vincent Deary calls Act One.
By: Vincent Deary
-
Looking for a Sign
- A Novel
- By: Susie Dumond
- Narrated by: Kimberly M. Wetherell
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reeling from a breakup with her long-term partner, Gray—an optimistic lesbian Aries—relocates to New Orleans for a new job. Gray wants to meet someone, settle down, and build the loving, accepting family she’s always wanted, but having been out of the dating scene for a decade, she has no idea where to start. After visiting an iconic astrologer, Gray and her best friend, Cherry, draw up a dramatic scheme: Gray will go on a date with someone of each zodiac sign to test their compatibility and get a jump start on creating the queer family of her dreams.
By: Susie Dumond
-
Kittentits
- A Novel
- By: Holly Wilson
- Narrated by: Stephanie Willing
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1992, and ten-year-old Molly is tired of living in the fire-rotted, nun-haunted House of Friends: a Semi-Cooperative Living Community of Peace Faith(s) in Action with her formerly blind dad and their grieving housemate Evelyn. But when twenty-three-year-old Jeanie, a dirt bike-riding ex-con with a shady past, moves in, she quickly becomes the object of Molly’s adoration. She might treat Molly terribly, but they both have dead moms and potty mouths, so naturally Molly is the moth to Jeanie’s scuzzy flame.
By: Holly Wilson
-
Exhibit
- A Novel
- By: R. O. Kwon
- Narrated by: Ami Park, Sue Jean Kim
- Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
By: R. O. Kwon
-
Housemates
- A Novel
- By: Emma Copley Eisenberg
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Bernie replies to Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography. After Bernie’s former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania.
-
-
Gratitude for some good queer love
- By EJW on 06-02-24
-
Here for the Wrong Reasons
- By: Annabel Paulsen, Lydia Wang
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson, Lindsey Dorcus
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Krystin knows exactly what she wants: a husband, a horse, and a place to hang all her competitive rodeo blue ribbons. But when none of the eligible bachelors in Montana end up being right for her, she turns to reality TV. On Hopelessly Devoted, Krystin will compete against dozens of other women for the heart of this season’s Hopeless Romantic, Josh Rosen. She’s determined to win the perfect life she came here for—if she can just ignore the glossy brunette whose crimson smile gives her goosebumps.
-
-
Great Writing and Story
- By Anonymous User on 05-24-24
By: Annabel Paulsen, and others
-
How We Are
- The How to Live Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Vincent Deary
- Narrated by: Matthew Brenher
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How We Are is an astonishing debut and the first part of the monumental How to Live trilogy, a profound and ambitious work that gets to the heart of what it means to be human: how we are, how we break, and how we mend. This first audiobook explores the power of habit and the difficulty of change. We live most of our lives automatically, in small worlds of comfortable routine - what author Vincent Deary calls Act One.
By: Vincent Deary
-
Looking for a Sign
- A Novel
- By: Susie Dumond
- Narrated by: Kimberly M. Wetherell
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reeling from a breakup with her long-term partner, Gray—an optimistic lesbian Aries—relocates to New Orleans for a new job. Gray wants to meet someone, settle down, and build the loving, accepting family she’s always wanted, but having been out of the dating scene for a decade, she has no idea where to start. After visiting an iconic astrologer, Gray and her best friend, Cherry, draw up a dramatic scheme: Gray will go on a date with someone of each zodiac sign to test their compatibility and get a jump start on creating the queer family of her dreams.
By: Susie Dumond
Love Books? You'll Love Audible.
Transform your day
Replace endless scrolling with endless listening. Chores can be fun.
Listen everywhere
Download titles to listen offline, wherever you are in the world.
Carry your entire Library
Your stories go where you go. Audiobooks don’t weigh a thing.
Listen and learn
Discover stories that can change your mind, your well-being, and your life.
Reach your reading goals
You can’t turn pages while you drive—but you can press play.
Find your niche
WIth thousands of titles to explore, there’s something for everyone.