Reading While Trans in 2020
by Paris Som
When
I read, I want worlds simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar,
because I can see myself in that world. Perhaps the writer and I might
share some core perspectives about how our own world works. Unfamiliar,
because I get to free-fall into the creative worlds of someone else’s
mind.
As
a trans woman whose relationships are mostly with other women, it’s not
always easy for me to find that familiarity. I don’t think I could
exist in many of the written worlds I come across. The long hand of
imperial history formed a culture around us that made no space for me.
It forged a common sense for us that excluded many parts of the great
natural diversity of what it means to be human, such that, the way we
talk about bodies, women, men, life, and pretty much everything, simply
precludes the existence of trans people, not to mention people who are
neither women nor men.
*
This
year, to pull the written mirror a little closer, I hunted down a stack
of trans novels written by trans writers. Magic happens when we find
ourselves in fiction. Without exaggeration, I confess that I cried the
first time I read a trans female character given full, deep life by a
trans woman author.
Reading
trans writers is also crucial for cis readers, in this historical
moment in which we, trans people, are now refusing to allow our
existence to be negated any longer. The world knows we’re here, but has a
long way to go in understanding what it’s like to be us, and in what
ways we need to change our culture to create equality.
Two novels that brought me joy this year were Nevada by Imogen Binnie and Little Fish
by Casey Platt. Both are messy novels, with messy protagonists, in the
best ways. Both drop you straight into the lives of a trans woman
desperately trying to keep all the threads of life together. Nevada
was a particularly powerful read for me. It’s a true brainy road-story
shambles, in the great U.S. tradition of Hunter S. Thompson, or
Bukowski, or William Boroughs, except that it’s genuinely more
interesting, because the shallow angst of drugged out cis white men can
really only take you so far. No one does chaos quite like a trans woman,
especially one who has read too much and thinks far too much about
gender and sex, as Maria, the protagonist, clearly has.
*
When reading books by cis women authors, there are a number of different kinds of experiences I can expect.
This
year, in my attempt to fill in ome of my woeful knowledge gaps of
feminist science fiction, I began reading some of the better known
novels written by the editor of my Publishing House, Aqueduct Press. In
a book like Alanya to Alanya by L. Timmel Duchamp, I feel
like there is some unwritten, little corner of that a world in which I
could exist. The forceful way in which Duchamp confronts us with male
violence, and the subtle but seemingly inescapable tricks of male
domination—especially in the form of one particularly odious
character—will probably resonate with any female reader. It certainly
gripped me, in that way that I both couldn’t wait and dreaded to pick up
the book again. It’s the kind of world in which trans women do not
explicitly exist, but there aren’t that many obstacles to me imagining
that I could exist in that world.
A trilogy I devoured this year, the Winternight
trilogy by Katherine Arden, presented me with a completely different
kind of challenge. It contained just the right ingredients to enthrall
me: a frozen northern environment, elements of the fairy world given
life, a medieval Russian setting, and lovely lyrical writing. The
protagonist could very well have been a trans boy. She throws herself
euphorically into playing the part of a wild warrior boy. Clearly the
character is written as a cis girl leaping over rigid gender roles. That
is a necessary and beautiful story to tell. The only problem is, it’s
being told in a world in which, once again, trans people don’t exist.
Trans isn’t even a possibility to be considered. She’s not given the
space to affirm that she is indeed a girl, just a rebellious one,
because there is no trans option which would, but its very inclusion,
make girlhood a possible affirming choice. Though a cis writer would
have to handle that very carefully too, so as to ensure that the
possible trans life is not seen as something to be rejected in favor of
the gender we were assigned at birth. Naturally, there probably didn’t
exist much cultural awareness of trans people in medieval Russia, but
trans people existed. We’ve always existed. And writers can create space
for us to exist in hostile cultures. Most cis writers don’t, though,
because we ourselves were raised in a culture in which we’re barely
aware that trans people exist. No matter all of that, I identified very
much with Vasilisa. I am drawn to characters who have to reject the
roles that society gave them because, at heart, that is a key element of
the trans experience. The cis author might not give space for trans
people in her universe, but my imagination can let the protagonist play
with possibilities.
I
can’t talk about joy without talking about a bit of sorrow too. It’s
important to recognize another kind of reading experience I had in 2020.
Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo, was a
difficult read for me, emotionally. It gives us a wonderful display of
British women’s lives, often lesbian, and mostly Black.
Not
only did I not exist in that world, but I sensed a tingling hostility
to the facts of my existence, throughout those lives and stories. I
imagine most cis readers would read Girl, Woman, Other
and not pick up at all on the little notes of exclusion that I see.
Exclusion often works in ways that are difficult for the included ones
to see. I imagine a Black reader, working their way through an account
of a group of white people in the U.S. South, creating communities in
which they celebrate the ideological purity of their group, and they
don’t allow anyone who doesn’t vote Republican to live amongst them,
might have a similar uncanny sense of alarm going off. Not only do I not
exist in the world of Girl, Woman, Other, but I would
be terrified to try and exist in it. Unfortunately overt transmisoginy
is strong in some feminist circles, and in some lesbian circles, and
those are exclusions that I face day in and day out, as a trans lesbian
feminist. I will have a very different experience reading that book,
than would a cis lesbian feminist. It’s a shame that a book celebrated
for showing us diversity is not open to the true full diversity of what
it means to be a woman.
*
Reading
while trans provides me with a new challenge with each book I pick up.
It certainly brings joy. Sometimes it can bring bemusement, pain, or
exhaustion. Or sometimes it can just give me a creative opportunity to
deepen the world I’m given even further, mingling my own imagination
with the imagination of the author. I certainly hope to see more writers
digesting the fact that trans people exist, learning what it’s like to
be trans in this society, learning what it is we need to achieve dignity
through equality, and, if not giving us straight-up trans characters,
at least creating worlds that openly acknowledge that we are also a part
of the fabric of humanity. At the same time, we need more trans and
queer voices, flooding our cultural spaces with all kinds of stories to
dive into with unguarded joy.
Som Paris is the author of Raven Nothing, which Aqueduct Press released in October. She was born in Oklahoma to a pair of traveling preachers who carried her on their missions around the world, inadvertently making of her an ardent internationalist. From southern Africa to the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and around the U.S.A., she ran away to Australia after high school and ran out of money studying tropical ecology, eventually surviving by living in a tree. She then moved to England, where she dove into studying history, literature, and philosophy in a BA and MA. More recently, she moved to the wilds of Galiza, in north Iberia. Surrounding herself with vegetable gardens and books, she began writing articles and then novels. When she came out as transgender, she turned her wild patch of land into a nature retreat for trans and queer people; she can still be found there now.
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