What is a “trans novel”?

Meredith Talusan on the tropes of trans memoir, the ethics of autobiographical representation, shame and narrative revision, and queer cruising.

A 1958 case study is widely believed to be “the first sociological case study of a transitioning person.” A new documentary short finally allows Agnes to speak in her own words. 

In a moment of attempted erasure by the government, eleven books that attempt the opposite: creating a body of work, a corpus, an inscription.

  Whatever happens against custom we say is against Nature, yet there is nothing whatsoever which is not in harmony with her. May Nature’s universal reason chase away that deluded ecstatic amazement which novelty brings to us. —Michel de Mont…