Getting to the Bottom of "Trans Lit"
Or why I don't like a term that covers everything and nothing
Question: What is trans lit?
Short Answer: whatever you want it to be.
Long Answer: I don’t know. Maybe something, but most likely, it’s nothing.
I was in the audience for a panel the other day that was about something loosely defined as “The Trans Year of Creativity.” And, I dunno, it was weird? It was loosely about the books that have come out this year, plus one that didn’t, and a historian who didn’t seem to really add a historical context. The whole thing kind of circled around a discussion of what “Trans Lit” is and what it’s not, and if I’m being honest, it brought up a lot of feelings in me, and today I’m going to try and work through them.
The panel talked mostly about the ins and outs of the publishing world, about how this “year of creativity” was a misnomer since it’s not like the books were written this year, and one panelist - the one who intimidates the hell out of me, although they’ve always been cordial when we chat - had the best line of the night when they made a Philip Roth joke.
But really, the panel was two things: too busy (seven panelists is way too many) and too ill-defined in how it was approaching trans literature. It had one sort of focus and angle, I think, and it overlooked one of this year’s best books (Joss Lake’s Future Feeling), instead focusing on a style of realism that maybe isn’t too tied down to one period and is exemplified by the work of Torrey Peters, Casey Plett and Alex McElroy. I don’t blame the moderator or anything, I think this is a common idea of what trans literature generally is.
What irks me is that “trans lit” is so much more than just that.
A few years ago, Plett wrote an essay called “The rise of the gender novel”. In it, she wrote about cis authors who wrote about gender in different ways, but then also about the rise of trans authors like Imogen Binnie. Where Middlesex uses gender as metaphor, trans authors write about people, full stop. Writes Plett:
“Books by writers who have actually transitioned, on the other hand, are quite different; their characters are free to be flawed.”
In this, one starts to see the idea of a “trans literature” starting to form. Writers like Binnie are stacked next to Trish Salah, Sybil Lamb and Morgan M. Page; in a sidebar, Plett recommends books by them to cis readers. With so little else being published back in 2015 - this was about the time I started writing about trans books because I didn’t see anyone else writing about them - this list was handed around on places like Tumblr where it, along with some zines, were almost like a canon of what to read. I’m going by memory, but a lot of these had a few things in common:
They didn’t talk about transition, it was something that's already happened
The protagonist had a messy life, and made lots of mistakes
Families weren’t really in the picture, it was more about making your own space in the world for yourself, in a world that didn’t really want you
They were usually set in Brooklyn
They had catchy names like “I’m going to puke!”
Looking back, it’s hard not to see the punk influence of Nevada on these zines and style of writing, which is a good thing. For example, there’s Lilith Latini’s novel-in-verse Improvise, Girl, Improvise. Less good is how it overshadowed writers like Porpentine Charity Heartscape, who wrote disturbing, dystopian sci-fi (dig Mall School with it’s haunting, post-capitalist hellscape).
Back to the panel. With the stunning success of Torrey Peters’ book Detransition, Baby this spring, the trans novel got new currency: it was suddenly there for the mainstream in a way that books like Little Fish, The Subtweet or Little Blue Encyclopedia weren’t. It was published by a major publisher, it was on Good Morning America and it was the kind of novel that featured messy trans people making mistakes in New York City. It was very much of the “trans lit” style and form. I think for many, it sets the tone for what is - and isn’t - part of that style/movement/moment. Which is good and bad in more or less equal parts.
It’s good because finally writers are getting their due: Peters is a tremendous writer, and one of the most individualistic stylists writing today. You can read a paragraph by her and know instantly who it’s by. It’s getting people interested in writers who may have otherwise been pushed to the margins; it probably helped get Nevada reissued by a major publisher. But it’s annoying because it covers a certain style of novel - where is the space for Future Feeling or Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel when all people want to talk about is a messy trans woman in Brooklyn?
I’ve thrown the phrase “Trans Lit” around a lot here, but I guess for me it’s just a helpful label when talking about stuff written by trans authors. It’s not a specific style, it’s not a movement and it’s not something with set rules or boundaries. I don’t think so, anyway. You have the dreamy surrealism of Sybil Lamb sitting next to stark realism of Plett next to the spooky magic of Jeanne Thornton, and that’s just three women. I haven’t even gotten to writers like Julian Jarboe, Jackie Ess or McElroy. Or writers who haven’t broken through yet: Emily Zhou, Paris Green, and many others.
Still, for me, it’s a label that’s helpful because it’s flexible, and it’s a hindrance because it doesn’t mean anything. When people try to make it into a movement, it draws artificial lines and stuffs everything into a box, pushing out what doesn’t fit. It’s something I use as a crutch, and should probably try and use less.
Things get a little more confusing with novels like The Wrong End of the Telescope, where cis author Rabih Alameddine writes about a trans woman, a doctor at a refugee camp. Does this novel qualify as “trans lit,” when it’s expressly about a trans person? Or, conversely, does it still count when a trans author writes about cis people, like in Zoey Leigh Peterson’s fiction? The term’s slippery at best, and often applies to whatever the speaker wants it to apply to.
I’m not interested in setting out a definition here. That’s something which is both above my paygrade and bores me. Setting out rules, patrolling the borders like I’m Lionel Trilling or something...that doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I’m mostly doing this for me, to try and either break myself of the habit or to sort of find a middle ground, one where if I use this term, I can at least use it in a way that doesn’t come off as gate-keepy or pretentious.
Back to the “year of trans creativity.” If indeed, this is the year, it’s reflected more by a new crop of young writers, people who are working on the margins, self-publishing on Substack or Itch.io, people who haven’t won Lambda awards, who don’t get invited onto Writers and Company and whose work is harder to find, but well-worth the effort.
Recently, I made a thread on Twitter asking people to suggest their favourite newcomers and suggested a few of my own. Since things on that site have a tendency to get lost, I’d like to repeat a few of them here:
Emily Zhou, who’s working on a book and has published some wonderful stories on Ancedata, her Substack
Paris Green, who has self-published several works and writes in an intense, hard-edged style that’s instantly recognizable
Caoimhe Harlock, who writes short fiction and draws comics in a deeply atmospheric, southern gothic style (dig Up From the Slime)
Alice Stoehr, who’s got two collections of short fiction on Itch.io that are rad
Kama La Mackerel’s book of poems, ZOM-FAM which I’ve heard nothing but good things about
Never Angeline North: their book Sea-Witch comes highly recommended, too
Again, there’s not much those authors’ works have in common, which gets me back to my main point: there isn’t really a trans lit, as such, because trans writers are constantly writing new, exciting work in pretty much any genre you can think of. If something covers everything, then it also covers nothing at all.