Jordy Rosenberg’s Rogue Steals Back Queer History in Confessions of the Fox
Western history did not look as you have been conditioned to believe it did—an unbroken string of white, land-owning men using their vision and Providence to make way for the societies of today. It should be obvious that people of various races, ethnicities, genders and sexualities have been making history for centuries. And to the long line of whipping standards with which we demarcate and delineate our past, Jordy Rosenberg’s historical novel, Confessions of the Fox, hoists the iridal.
Availing himself to the British folk hero Jack Sheppard, Rosenberg creates a 1720s London wherein African and South Asian exploitation and exploration have created a cosmopolitan metropolis. Rosenberg’s Sheppard is still an infamous rogue—a pickpocket, thief and gaol-breaker par excellence—but he masterfully seizes on Sheppard’s petite size to envision the character as transgender and Sheppard’s lover, Bess, as Southeast Asian.
Written with superannuated style, the rhetorical flair blooming like ancient heliotropes from Sheppard’s true confessions, Rosenberg’s Sheppard and Bess highlight the Western canon for an audience that has always existed. This is less revelation than reclamation, not a reimagining but a correction for what has been edited out.
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