Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT Leroy Issue #37

By Savannah Knoop

By Ling Ma
Published: September 1st, 2008 | 10:29am

I was totally cynical when I heard that Savannah Knoop was coming out with a memoir. The whole JT Leroy scandal is so, well, 2006. That was the year when Knoop was revealed to be the impersonator of “JT Leroy,” a fictional former truck-stop prostitute who wrote the acclaimed autobiographical novel Sarah, among other works.

Knoop was the then-sister-in-law of Laura Albert, the real writer of Leroy’s books. Together, the two women turned JT into a celebrity. Albert would often conduct Leroy’s interviews over the phone, while Knoop presented herself for public appearances.

Though I was ready to rip this memoir to shreds, I was won over by its most redeeming quality: It isn’t an apology. With her modest voice and writerly eye for visual detail, Knoop simply unfolds her story, and it’s a simple one. It’s a story of two women with body-image issues (both have had eating disorders) who share an identity together.

There is, however, a confusing presentation of chronology and Knoop’s evasiveness of the money question: Why did she play along for six years? It’s only toward the end that she hints at the reason. “Being JT meant living in the moment,” Knoop reflects. “It was an exciting reprieve from real life.”

Now it’s time to live her own.

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