‘One Nightstand’ With Tommy Dorfman

In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at the blond in 11 Howard to discuss some of their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.

Tommy Dorfman always knew she had a book in her, but it wasn't until she began transitioning in 2020 that its shape began to emerge. “I had a lot of anger at myself for waiting so long and I didn't know why I was waiting or what I was actually afraid of,” the actor tells me when we meet in New York to talk about her debut memoir, Maybe This Will Save Me. “I think a lot of people were faced with those deep questions in [pandemic-induced] isolation, surrounded by death in the media and in the streets. I had a lot of shame and confusion that I needed to investigate.”

Shame and confusion are themes that come up often in the books that shaped Dorfman as a reader. Like in Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors, which explores his chaotic, deeply unconventional adolescence. “It was, in many ways, a queer affirmation story for me,” she says. “It wasn’t my gay awakening, but it gave me comfort in knowing that I wasn’t alone in some of the trials and tribulations young queer people go through in trying to find themselves.” What stuck with her most was the way it balanced both pain and absurdity. “There was a comedy and a rawness to it that deeply resonated with me.”

Levity in the face of tragedy is what also drew Dorfman to Cookie Mueller’s Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: a cult collection of short stories from the late actor and writer best known for her roles in John Waters’ films. “It deals with themes of addiction, recovery, and sexual trauma, but through a darkly comedic, beautifully poetic [lens],” she says. “It’s so perfect and imperfect. It feels completely unedited yet still pithy and concise. It’s a full film in my brain.”

But when it came to Severance by Ling Ma — the 2018 novel about the survivors of an incurable infection which slowly wipes out the planet — Dorfman fully embraced its darkness. “I started reading it right before the pandemic and it felt divine to be reading this book about a global pandemic that destroys the world. I loved having this fear,” she says. “I also think this idea that you could be so stuck in your own shit that you don't even realize that the world is burning around you is what's happening thematically today.”

Of all the books that have influenced her, though, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou remains foundational. “Growing up as a white kid in Georgia, it was the first book that opened my brain and my heart to the community around me and the systemic racism within this country,” she says. Angelou’s story — of girlhood, violence, and premature adulthood — struck a deep chord. “Even though my circumstances were very different, I related to her feeling of being trapped in a system that is oppressive, violent, and dangerous.”

It’s a memoir Dorfman reflects on often, particularly when it she set out to write her own. “Her ability to break the form of what the world thought autobiography had to be at that time is really inspiring to me,” she says. “It’s often those who are the most oppressed, who create the most change because there’s no roadmap. So you're forced to create the roadmap for yourself.”