By Rudy Harries
Juno Roche has written extensively on trans sex and intimacy for years. However, her newly released memoir A Working Class Family Ages Badly offers a deeper and more intentional look at her own experiences.
In recent years I’ve struggled to read books in any length of reasonable time, but this one I breathe in over two sittings – an eye-watering 180 pages devoured in one afternoon on my sofa.
Juno is irresistible, and the prose is relentless and absorbing. It’s not a page turner in the traditional sense, but in reading it, Juno grasps your hand and pulls you along for her journey, and you simply don’t want to let go. You sit beside her as she experiences heroin withdrawal in Egypt, a lover’s intense battle with AIDS, and the terror of the early days of COVID-19 in a remote Spanish village.
In the days leading up to our interview, I’m nervous. It feels strange to say that I find A Working Class Family Ages Badly affirming, but I do. It’s not often that I, a working class trans person with a typical plethora of trauma, gets to read about someone like them persisting like Juno does in this book – and that alone makes the book very special.
By Rudy Harries