A review of mine for A Discovery of Witches is up at Blog Her!
I need to warn you up front: Deborah Harkness’ novel, A Discovery of Witches is part one of a trilogy, and the second book isn’t scheduled to come out until next year. I say “warn you” because I made it a third of the way through the book before I read the dust jacket and learned the tale of Dr. Diana Bishop wouldn’t be complete for a few more years. And already, a third of the way into the first book, I knew I wanted to read the whole trilogy.
Check out the full review here.
It has been quite a while since I’ve done a post on trans fiction, hasn’t it! The LGBT literary site Lamnda Literary had a post a while back by Cheryl Morgan titled Is There, or Should There Be, Such a Thing as ‘Trans Lit’? The post has lots of interesting links to authors who have written on or about trans issues, including links to various trans comics and trans fiction sites. (Some of which I’ve linked to from this blog, and some of which I’d never seen before. Check out both the main post and the comments.)
But I have to admit, I was (and am) a little confused by the question Morgan is asking. It seems self evident – even in the links within her post, not to mention those in the comments – that there is trans literature being generated. (Morgan seems to define ‘trans lit’ as ‘fiction,’ a definition I don’t have any problems with.) More broadly, she seems to be creating divisions where none need be:
Yet what would “trans literature” be like? When we talk about the literature of an identity group we mean that members of the group want to read about people like themselves. African-Americans want books with African-American protagonists; lesbians want books with lesbian protagonists; and so on. But the trans community is very diverse, and different parts of it have very different needs. Cross-dressers, for example, often read, and write, erotic fantasies about cross-dressing. Pre-transition transsexuals reportedly read memoirs and theory voraciously in order to find out if transition is right for them, and how to survive it. Post transition, however, they often settle happily into their preferred gender and have no further need for trans books. They are often content identifying with characters of their preferred gender and don’t want to be reminded of what they see as a painful past life.
Those who regard themselves as in a third gender, as gender-free or gender-fluid, and those who are intersex, will probably want books about people like themselves. Obviously there is a real need for a literature for them. However, they are only a part of the trans community (and apologies to any of them who do not want to be regarded as part of it), so the market is even smaller.
Continue reading 'Trans Lit – searching for our reflections'»
I saw a few people were viewing this blog via searching for Whateley Academy fiction and reading the post I wrote about what trans-related fiction I was going to keep and what I was going to toss. Looking over the authors I noted, I first want to apologize if any of them are viewing the blog and seeing I chose to toss their work. (Eek!) I certainly hope that’s not the case.
I also think I was unfair to some of their work and/or its effect on me. I realized when looking over that post that I reread a lot of the things I said I was going to ‘toss.’ I think part of that has to do with my feeling worse due to hormone levels – when I’m feeling like I’m ‘backsliding’ with the transition there’s more of a desire to access a fictional world of someone who (by choice or not) moving forward with a transition. I think I’ve already touched on why that’s been true for me in the past, and think those same reasons hold true now.
Hopefully the hormones will be going back up in a few weeks and I’ll feel less of a desire to read some of the stuff I mentioned, but I also want to go back through and note a few places I was just wrong – where the fiction was better than I was (in my somewhat down mood) giving it credit.
-R
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