Pageboy: A Memoir

Content Warning: This book and guide contain detailed descriptions of self-harm, disordered eating, stalking, physical and sexual assault, emotional abuse, suicidal ideation, and anti-LGBTQ bias. The source text uses anti-LGBTQ slurs, sometimes as an act of reclamation and sometimes in descriptions of anti-LGBTQ bias and violence that Elliot Page experienced.

Elliot Page introduces his memoir. He emphasizes that his story is one of an “infinite number of ways to be queer and trans” (8) and urges readers to seek out other queer and trans stories. Page explains how his gender and sexuality are different and how “coming out as queer was a wholly different experience from coming out as trans” (9). Because his journeys to both realizations were nonlinear, his memoir is also presented in a nonlinear fashion.

Elliot Page begins his memoir with his memory of meeting a woman named Paula at the age of 20. He, Paula, and some mutual friends went to a gay bar called Reflections, where he and Paula kissed. It was the first time Page had been to a queer bar and his first time kissing a woman in public.