Rose Dommu’s Best Woman comes as a family drama and coming-of-age story intricately wrapped within the genre of romantic comedy. Containing all the most necessary elements — a much-anticipated return to one’s hometown, a long-held high school crush, and one little lie that snowballs into much more—the novel chronicles Julia Rosenberg’s pilgrimage from New York City to Boca Raton to serve in her younger brother’s wedding as his “best woman” a few years after coming out and beginning hormones. All things considered, Julia leads a relatively stable  life in her queer New York City bubble; her family back home is supportive, she has wonderful friends and a job that (barely) pays her rent—but there is something missing from her life. Following a fateful trip to the mall, that something begins to outline itself as Kim Cameron: Julia’s high-school crush, a devoted lesbian, and the newly-minted maid of honor in the wedding. The question is not so much whether Kim might like Julia in her estrogenized, grown-up form, but how far Julia will go to ensure they find themselves closer than was ever deemed possible in Julia’s adolescent fantasies. 

Best Woman is a sparkling love story that, like its influences (My Best Friend’s Wedding, Garden State), is at turns heart-wrenching and buoyant, allowing both its protagonist and readers to contemplate their truest desires and most avoided fears. Dommu charts a course for Julia characterized by less-than-graceful missteps and just the right amount of humor, leaving her hurling toward the consequences of her own actions to reveal that what she wants may not in fact be what she needs most. With an unforgettable cast of supporting characters and a voice that’s sure of itself, Best Woman and Dommu offer an almost-scientifically perfect cocktail of love, betrayal, angst and relief. Best Woman is as re-readable as its influences are rewatchable. 

I had the pleasure of speaking with Dommu via Zoom ahead of her debut’s release to discuss being trans at straight weddings, the possibilities of transition, and the necessity of intimacy and community for queer people.

Christ: The title Best Woman has a few meanings. Can you say more about how those came to be? 

Rose Dommu: When I started writing the book, it was named My Best Trans Wedding. Early on, I thought about calling it “Best Woman,” but it seemed so first thought. Closer to finishing it, I realized that there was no other title. It’s very descriptive. Julia is the best woman in the wedding, and so much of this novel is about Julia trying to prove that she is the best version of a woman that she, as a trans woman, can be. I really liked the way that the title worked on those two levels, and I also liked the idea that my name forever would be linked to the words “best woman.” So my official title could be Rose Dommu: Best Woman. 

C: In what ways do you see transness as enhancing or interrupting the rhythms of the rom-com genre? 

RD: It does both in a way that identity tends to do in those kind of formulaic, almost archetypical stories in which we have traditionally only seen cis, white hetero people for millennium. Adding transnesses into the narrative disrupts the conventions of the form, but brings so many new possibilities to them. Go back as far as Shakespeare and look at the ways in which gender deviance and trickery were used as plot devices in Twelfth Night. The same thing happens when you inject a trans character into any story. I wanted to write a story in which the main character’s identity as a trans person wasn’t circumstantial. I wanted to write a story in which the story could only happen if that character was trans. 

C: What is it about weddings in particular that make the experience of being a trans woman so tenuous? 

RD: Weddings are gender. Period. From top to bottom everything about the wedding is gendered, from what people wear to whose side they sit on, all of the activities leading up to the wedding, what kind of gifts you give, what you have to wear. It’s possibly the most gendered group experience we can have socially because it is, by nature, about the wedding of two different genders to create some new kind of, like, transcendent unit. If it’s a family wedding, it’s a time when you are checking in with everyone in your larger familial sphere. You meet everyone’s new kids, and you see that aunt you haven’t seen since you were 10. 

Sticking a trans person in that very gendered atmosphere seemed like a good place to send a character who needed to confront—not in an antagonistic way—her family at-large for the first time since transitioning, and figure out what her new place within that ecosystem. Transitioning does or can really change the dynamics in your family. There’s so many gendered expectations of a wedding that it was really interesting to see how a trans character would navigate that. 

C: I have like four weddings to go to this year, and I’ve been to a handful over the last four years since I’ve transitioned. The expectation is all the attention is always on the bride, but when you’re the only visibly trans woman at a wedding, you’re next in line in terms of attention, whether you really want it or not.

RD: Absolutely. And I think it becomes like, “Oh, how are we going to deal with her?” You become like the drunk uncle everyone is worried is going to get on the mic and make a speech and embarrass everybody, and you’re literally just there existing. 

C: I love how many tropes there are pulled from various romantic comedies throughout the novel. One of the most obvious ones that comes through is the regression of self that happens when you return to your hometown. How is that further complicated by Julia’s transition? 

RD: Transition really is like going through a second puberty. We put chemicals in our bodies, forcing them to essentially go through the puberty that we missed. My emotions have never been as heightened as they were in the early years of my transition, when I was on my highest dose of hormones. That’s already a really volatile emotional and physical state to be in anywhere. In New York, Julia is feeling that in the safest environment she can be, surrounded by all of her super queer friends. She’s really insulated. And then she’s thrown into the most cis-hetero experience possible, full of all of her family and people she’s known her whole life, and she’s doing it essentially with the hormones of a pubescent girl. That is a recipe for disaster. 

C: There’s a thematic dichotomy of honesty and pretending throughout a lot of the book. How do those habits and practices come into play in a story about family, tradition, romance, and transition?

RD: I think to both protect ourselves and to protect our family members, we do a lot of pretending. We have to [do] a lot of managing: managing everyone’s expectations and their egos. A family unit has to pretend to be better than maybe they necessarily are, especially in situations where the spotlight is on them, like the wedding. Honesty and illusion are two sides of the same coin. They are really the foundation of the trans experience because early on in my transition, I felt like I was doing all of this smoke and mirrors to try to show something that was actually deeply true about myself. That need softened over time, and now I actually sometimes wish I had more energy to be full fantasy, but it’s too hard.

But weddings are all about fantasy. Why else would you throw this huge party that no one can afford, no one really wants to go to. All of it, pretending that these two people are actually going to spend the rest of their lives together, when in fact we know in all likelihood, they’re getting divorced within the next 10 years. We all pretend that we’re having the time of our lives. We have to pretend that a wedding is the most important event in this married couple’s life when in fact it’s just like a big party. Every character in the novel is doing a version of what Julia is doing, which is projecting some kind of illusion, some kind of idealized version of themselves that they want other people to see, while holding something deeply true, and in many cases, deeply painful inside of them. And those characters are only able to finally come closer together when they start letting each other see the true parts of themselves. 

C: Best Woman captures so acutely that transition is both a bridge and a chasm in relationships. How does this complexity show up in Julia’s extended circle of friends and family? 

RD: It really is both at the same time in almost every relationship. Look at her and Daytona: becoming sisters in this way. It has absolutely brought them closer together and Daytona shows up for Julia in some really striking, meaningful ways. We also see that Julia’s transition in some ways created a chasm between them, because Daytona felt like in their group, she was the woman, being trans was her thing.

The same thing happened between Julia and her mother. This refrain that she repeats to herself throughout the book that her mother said, “Oh, I always wanted a daughter.” We know that that comes back to bite her in the ass in the end. Transitioning gave everyone in Julia’s life this new context with which to understand her better, but at the same time, whether it was transphobia or straight-up misogyny or just distance and societal pressure, it also created its own form of distance. On the flip side, there are relationships that were incredibly distant, like Julia’s relationship with her father, and in this really lovely way, he shows up for her, bringing them closer together. It doesn’t even really have much to do with transition, it’s more about him recognizing that she needs him in a way that she hasn’t since she was a child. Julia would not have had the emotional vulnerability to accept that kind of help five, ten years ago. 

C: Throughout all the wedding festivities, it becomes apparent how thin the line is between well-meaning liberalism and side-eyeing conservatism. How do Julia and Kim make sense of the information they take in with the difference in their perspectives they’ve been given? 

RD: That’s really tricky because in trying so hard to be woke, to be inclusive, to have empathy, so many people end up being even more aggressive than if they were just being outright transphobic. The best example of this is a cis woman who’s overcompensating by being like, hey, lady. And you know the “lady” is so pointed that it almost sounds like, “Hey, male-bodied person who has a penis who I’m pretending is a woman.” 

That kind of liberalism can be very stinky and people very often want a pat on the back for it. They want everyone to know how accepting they are and that need is in and of itself a type of aggression. These are two women who live in maybe the most progressive city in the country and have not gone back to where they were raised in any meaningful way. Julia is really trying to move in silence. Whereas Kim’s a little bit more defensive and more prone to call out bad behavior when she sees it. That’s really what kicks off the whole dynamic between them at the Cheesecake Factory when the waiter misgenders Julia. And the thing is, Julia in that moment thinks to herself she would’ve preferred it if they just ignored it, because she’s learned that it’s so much easier and safer to just let that go. Honestly, if you were gonna say something to every service worker who misgenders you, you would never get anything done. 

C: What function do you see nostalgia playing in Best Woman? 

RD: It’s a book about going home again. Nostalgia is baked into that. It’s about this adult woman who has carved out her own life through blood, sweat, and tears. Going home to a place that she didn’t really feel safe or normal in growing up that she has really outgrown. Nostalgia is something she uses as a way to insulate herself against that. That’s why on the plane ride home she’s watching all those classic rom-coms. She’s kind of hypnotizing herself and priming herself to experience this week as if it’s happening to someone else. 

C: We know Julia in the book has named herself after Julia Roberts because she says so, but is it a coincidence that both Kim and Julia’s names are also from My Best Friend’s Wedding? Was that a choice? 

RD: It is not a coincidence at all. Even though the circumstances of the plot are very different, it’s kind of the fantasy of what if Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz’s characters at the end of My Best Friend’s Wedding were both like, “Fuck Dermot Mulroney. Why don’t we just hook up?”

C: The epigraph comes from My Best Friend’s Wedding where Julia Roberts’s character says she must be ruthless in the pursuit of her own happiness. How does this apply so neatly to Julia and to trans women more generally? 

RD: This is a very un-woke thing for me to say, but transition is kind of the most selfish act you can commit. And thank God! It’s like a spell that you’re placing over yourself and over everyone in your life. You’re saying, “My reality is more important than yours, and you need to meet me there.” You do have to be ruthless to be trans in a transphobic world. You have to selfish. You have to put your own comfort and self-actualization above the lived experience of literally everyone you will ever encounter again, and that’s why I think trans people are so fucking badass. 

C: Towards the end of the book Julia’s relationship to Daytona is spotlighted. Why was it important to have Daytona appear à la Rupert Everett at the end of the novel? 

RD: Julia really believes at the beginning of the novel that she needs Kim’s validation to finally be a version of herself that she will be totally happy and comfortable and satisfied with. Not to be too corny, but what she actually needed was what she already had the whole time, which was sisterhood and community. Daytona is the complete representation of that. The women, the people, in my life who have—not to be too Wicked: For Good-promo about it—changed me for the better are other trans people and particularly trans women. Being seen by them is so moving and powerful. That’s the real love story of this book.