Trans Characters in Novels

Cheryl Morgan asks Is There, or Should There Be, Such a Thing as Trans Lit? It’s a good question. She leaves out a bunch of books, like Feinberg’s Drag King Dreams and Luna, written for young adults and winner of the prestigious National Book Award. Ursula LeGuin’s entire civilization in The Left Hand of Darkness is, effectively, trans, in a third gender, gender-fluid, gender-neutral sort of way. Neil Gaiman has had good portrayals of trans people in his books, most notably in Sandman. There’s Trans-Sister Radio, which came out a few years back.

I’d love to hear more, if you can think of others – novels in which trans people are characters – so have at it.

I think there already is such a thing as Trans Lit. As with gay & lesbian lit, it includes all the various genres: history, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, etc. Personally I’d like to see more books where a character happens to be trans, and what is important about them isn’t necessarily, or only tangentially, their transness. The novel I’m working on now has at least one, and I’m not even sure I’m going to mention that the person is trans. Honestly, isn’t every book about any person potentially about a trans person? How do we know Jake Gatsby wasn’t a trans guy, after all?