(A.K. Summers reads at Third Place Books on Monday, August 11th at 7pm and at Elliott Bay Book Company on Tuesday, August 12th at 7 pm. Both readings are free.)

On the first page of Pregnant Butch, the narrator identifies herself as "a butch dyke" who never concerned herself with femininity. So when she got pregnant, she worried about how she'd be perceived by the world. She marvels that "pregnancy increased my ability to pass" as masculine, even though she had to stand on public transit because "people take you for just another fat guy on the subway." The early chapters of Pregnant Butch are interested in perception; the protagonist tries out suspenders and wrestles with the word "pregnancy," which "always made me feel squeamish." (It's curious that Summers bills the book as "a graphic memoir," and the cover text assures us that the book is based on her own experiences, but the protagonist is named Teek Thomasson, presumably to give Summers a bit of space to navigate between reality and fantasy. As a reader, that space feels awkward; either the book should be billed as a memoir and star Summers, or it should be a novel that's based on reality.)

Gradually, Pregnant Butch veers from the external to the internal, explaining why Thomasson and her partner decided to have a child, how she was impregnated, and what being pregnant was like for her. It's a warts-and-all portrayal of pregnancy, for sure, and Thomasson's discomfort with her body's changes might make the reportage feel a little more relatable for those have no idea what pregnancy could possibly feel like.

Summers is a talented artist, although she bounces from style to style a little too freely without establishing a baseline mood, giving the book an antic, schizophrenic feel. One one page, she renders herself realistically in one panel, then as a Tintin-looking cartoon, and finally in the noodly style of an R. Crumb–style underground comix artist. There's no context for the changes, and so it comes across as inconsistency, rather than a stylistic choice. But the comic is well-drawn, and Summers relays the honesty of the situation throughout the book, including the (emotional and literal) nudity of the birth sequence, which never feels prurient or self-obsessed. She's an excellent host who puts the questions and concerns of her reader before her own, making this a fascinating account of an unusual experience.