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- ISBN: 1-894692-11-X
- $19.95
- Fiction/Queer Studies
- 294pp
- 2005
“There are too many rules here. It’s like the floor’s covered with those old-fashioned foot appliqués they use for dance lessons. Lines showing you which way to go. Except, I don’t see any of it. I barrel into a room. Go whichever direction I want. That’s really frowned on. It’s not really a place for the independent thinker.” - Alex, Code White
As Code White opens, a bewildered, exhausted and defiant Alex is waking up in a psych ward, covered in mud, wondering where she is and how she arrived there. Still slowing from a manic episode, Alex immediately demands information on the meds she’s been plied with, along with a pen and a notebook.
Alex’s diary reports the often hilariously bizarre details of her days on the inside. The other patients are getting on her nerves. Her friends on the outside don’t know how to deal with her or offer buckets of recovery advice. Alex scopes her ward-mates, skirmishes with the staff and stays true to her high-femme identity even when draped in hospital-issue pyjama bottoms. Negotiating dyke drama on both sides of the locked doors, Alex is a witty, neurotic narrator seducing characters and readers with the machinations of her lively, complex mind.
Code White is an innovative story rippling with sardonic humour, sexual tension and rebellious honesty in a setting that often lacks all three.
“Code White is a lifeboat of electric femme red set against a sea of stark industrial white. Debra Anderson's style and focus is fierce and unblinking in this love story for the strange survivors of even stranger places.” - Mariko Tamaki