Kate Bornstein’s Hello, monde cruel: 272 is not just a French translation, it is a lifeline hurled into the dark ocean where so many marginalized souls tread water alone. Adapted from Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws, this powerful and unorthodox guide dares to speak the unspeakable with tenderness, irreverence, and radical compassion. Bornstein doesn’t offer a sanitized, clinical pamphlet on how to survive. Instead, she offers a fiercely honest, vulnerable, and practical book aimed at those who have been cast out, othered, misnamed, and misunderstood. The number 272 replaces 101 in the title, reflecting the French publisher’s creative retitling, perhaps a nod to the multitude of choices, possibilities, or simply a defiant refusal to adhere to the expected.
What sets this book apart is its deeply personal tone.
As Bornstein writes in the preface, "Si j’ai écrit ce livre, c’est pour t’aider à rester en vie. Parce qu’à mon avis, le monde a besoin de plus de gens au grand cœur, peu importe ce qu’ils sont et font." (I wrote this book to help you stay alive. Because I believe the world needs more kind-hearted people, no matter what they are or do.) That declaration sets the mood for a book that is less about surviving according to someone else’s standards and more about helping readers rediscover reasons to stay alive, on their own terms. Whether the suggested alternatives include “moisturize” or “shatter some family values,” Bornstein’s only rule remains beautifully simple: don’t be mean. It’s a book about permission, giving yourself permission to stay alive, to break rules, to reinvent yourself, and to choose joy over compliance.
Bornstein has never fit neatly into any box, and she makes sure readers know they don’t have to either. Her journey, detailed in the Heroines interviews, mirrors the message of Hello, monde cruel. From a high-ranking officer in Scientology’s Sea Org to gender rebel, playwright, and survivor, Bornstein’s life has been shaped by acts of courageous nonconformity and the relentless pursuit of authenticity. She has lived many lives, and nearly lost some of them to suicidal despair.
This book is her attempt to stop others from going down that same road. As she shares in the interview, she wrote it not out of theory or ideology, but out of a lived need to offer alternatives she wished she had found herself.
The alternatives Bornstein suggests range from the mundane to the radical. Some are deceptively simple: buy a pair of glittery socks, sing badly in public, or write a letter you’ll never send. Others are invitations to shake the foundations: break a toxic silence, outgrow a family expectation, or dare to be visible in a world that wants you erased. The brilliance of the book lies in how it weaves playful possibilities with raw, urgent truths. This is not a guide that tells you to "just hang in there" or promises things will get better. Rather, it says: what if you tried this one thing today, just to stay alive until tomorrow?
In the Heroines interview, Bornstein speaks about her cancer diagnosis and her evolving understanding of gender as she ages. “I’m too old to be cute,” she jokes. “My boobs are sagging. Boy, oh boy. They’re down to my waist.” But there’s power in that letting go. Power in surviving long enough to not need external validation, and in sharing that hard-won knowledge with others. This is the kind of survival that isn’t pretty, but it’s real. And in Bornstein’s world, realness always beats polish.
The French edition of this work makes an important contribution to the international discourse on queer survival. While queer and trans communities in Anglophone countries have had more access to alternative narratives for some time, the French-speaking world, especially teens and young adults, often lacks this kind of raw, accessible, loving guidance.
Hello, monde cruel arrives not as a translation, but as a cultural intervention. It opens the door wider for those who live between identities, who don't want to conform, and who struggle to articulate the need to stay alive in a world that barely acknowledges them.
Kate Bornstein has spent her life defying binaries, of gender, of good and evil, of sanity and madness, of who deserves to live. In this book, she takes on the binary of life or death and offers a dazzling, gritty middle ground: life with complications, life with contradictions, life with no clear rules. Her book is a survival toolkit for those who’ve been handed no map. And in the end, Hello, monde cruel: 272 is not just about staying alive. It’s about staying alive in a way that’s worth it.
For anyone who has felt too weird, too queer, too broken, too lost, too unlovable, Kate Bornstein’s voice is the one you didn’t know you were waiting for. She won’t tell you it’s going to be easy. But she will tell you, fiercely and with love: Don’t be mean. Stay alive. The world needs you, exactly as you are.
Bornstein never felt comfortable with the belief of the day that all trans women are "women trapped in men's bodies." They did not identify as a man, but the only other option was to be a woman, a reflection of the gender binary, which required people to identify according to only two available genders. Another obstacle was the fact that Bornstein was attracted to women. Bornstein now identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them and she/her.
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Photo via Heroines of My Life
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