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?
Worst trans-ish story I read was Heinlein’s _I Will Fear No Evil_. On the other hand, Heinlein’s _Friday_ resonated well with my experience.
Go figure.
For YA lit – there is Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger and Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher. I think James St. James also has a book called Freak Show for teens. Parrotfish is a 1st person story about a trans guy who comes out at school and Almost Perfect is about a guy who discovers the new girl who he has a crush on is trans.
There is the Danish Girl by David Ebershoff – the film begins shooting this spring and by the director of the Cider House Rules and Chocolat.
In the comic books by Brian K. Vaughn there are some transgender characters in Y:The Last Man and what eventually becomes a transexual character (more defined when Joss Whedon takes over the writing) in the The Runaways with an E.T. named Xavin. On her planet people can switch genders, but she identifies as a girl and others have trouble with this and her relationship with another girl in the group. Later on, another writer has trouble with this and tries to change it… so stop after Joss Whedon finishes his six issues.
A main character in Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters is trans.
Oh, there are way more examples than I was allowed space for in that article. Please keep the suggestions coming though, many of them are new to me.
FWIW, I have an article about Friday here.
it was a pretty good rundown, though I couldn’t agree with
“Finally, we shouldn’t ignore non-trans writers who want to experiment. Trans characters are quite popular as fictional devices, especially in science fiction where writers love to speculate on the future of humanity. As trans people are still so badly misunderstood and feared by the rest of society, any positive portrayals of them are to be welcomed”
Just how much experimentation are we going to be uncritically welcoming here? Because folks get it wrong more often than not and we know when we’re saying “plot device” and “speculation on the future of humanity” it frequently devolves in to Gender Unicorn land where non-trans folk can project their anxiety about gender on to trans characters.
A great part of Gore Vidal’s problematic work was problematic in part because Myria Breckinridge’s transsexuality was a plot device and reflection upon Gore’s conflicted feelings with the early feminist movement combined with a good does of misogyny (“artificialness” of being femal). Middlesex basically uses the protagonist’s intersex condition as a stand in for a nature vs. nurture debate and to explore the nature of polar opposites.
This concerns me, because I don’t consider my experience as a plot device or specultive, I don’t see many educational opportunities in most of these ventures. We all know that it’s the nature of the mass market that often it’s the most problematic works that get the most exposure and not the works of authors who come seeking Cheryl’s counsel to get it right.
Jennifer Finney Boylan apperently has a new YA book called “Falcon Quinn and The Black Mirror” that comes out in may. Not a trans character, but I was wondering if any one knows what the four other YA books she wrote under a pseudonym are?
>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.<
I seem to recall a character in the movie ‘The Wonder Boys’ that was tranz, whose being tranz wasn’t an important part of the story. Was it a book first?
The boy in the dress by David Walliams. It’s probably the only trans children’s book and hilarious too.
Luna by Julie Ann Peters is a young adult book about a high school aged trans girl and her sister. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_(novel)
10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewart is a recent children’s book about a gender variant boy.
http://www.amazon.com/10-000-D.....1583228500
Choir Boy by Charlie Anders is a book about a trans/gender variant teenaged boy.
Courtney:
Yep, I feel your pain. Science fiction in particular has a poor reputation of using unrealistic portrayals of trans people to make political points about gender. Some of the worst offenders are lesbian feminists. The point I was trying to make with that paragraph is that we shouldn’t automatically condemn a book about a trans character simply because it is by a cis writer. We need our stories told well, and if we can find cis people to do so that’s helpful. If they do so badly then we correct them. What we shouldn’t do is discourage them from trying, because that will pretty much guarantee they get it wrong.
The good news is that things appear to be getting better. That is, at least in SF, many cis writers are making a conscious to use trans characters fairly, and are consulting people like Roz Kaveney or myself for advice on doing so.
ginasf:
Thanks, you beat me to it. I particularly love Marcus’s book, which is a picture book aimed at very young kids.
People might also try Questors by Joan Lennon, a middle school book that includes an alien kid from a species where physical gender differences don’t express at all until puberty. Also Cycler and Recycler by Lauren McGaughlin, YA novels about a girl who, werewolf-like, turns into a boy once a month.
“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?”
Aha! I knew it!
It would hardly be the largest of his self-reinventions, after all…
Interesting idea. Ironically, that makes for the same dilemma for trans characters as for flesh-and-blood trans people. If their transness is seen, then the fact that it’s seen is taken as proof that they aren’t “successful” or “real” or whatever. If it’s unseen, then they can’t refute the assertion that successful trans people don’t exist.
Thomas Berger(Little Big Man) wrote “A Regiment of Women” about total gender role reversal in a Dystopic future(the men are secretaries and make themselves pretty for their balding female bosses). Maybe that’s more feminist than Trans, but pretty funny nonetheless.
The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich – (SPOILER) the protaganist is investigating miracles in a western rural community, and the local catholic priest turns out to a passing butch…..(it’s been a while, not sure of all the details….)
Nobody mentions Irving’s Garp? Not just for Roberta Muldoon (which those who saw the movie but did not read the book will focus on) but the fact that Garp’s son ends up with a young transwoman in the last chapter which did not make the film (“…there no sex like trans-sex…” still comes to mind years after reading it)
Wikipedia notes that transsexualism is a theme in Irving’s “A Son of the Circus” (have not read) and protaganist Jack Burns in the supposedly loosely autobiographical “Until I Find You” gaisn fame as a cross-dressing actor.
[...] a great post over at en|Gender that offers some useful book suggestions on trans characters in novels. There’s always more books than I have time to read but I keep [...]