Trans and More Trans Essays
"Small God(s)" + Both/And anthology news
Some quick things to plug. First is yet another trans essay I wrote in my summer frenzy of gender thoughts, which my friend Justin Aoba so graciously published on his newsletter/blog, Dispatches from the Ruins of the Present (which, by the way, is such a fire name for a blog). You can read “Small God(s)” from the previous link or on his Substack here. Fun little note about this one — I do like to track the chronology of thought across my work, because I am fascinated by how minds change and grow and adjust, often without straightforward logic, and I like to keep these contradictions and complications in my writing intact. It wouldn’t be truthful without them. So on the heels of “I Saw the Mirror Flicker,” which talks about “killing the girl” inside me and “self-cannibalizing and then spitting everything back up again,” I re-order, nearly renege, these thoughts in “Small God(s)”:
Lately I have been surprised to find some amount of girl in me, despite my best efforts these past few years to kill her. Lately I have been finding some perverse joy in donning my old skirts and dresses, and finding that the lines of topography have changed on these once familiar clothes, and that they evince the boy in me more thoroughly than men’s clothes ever could. There is a kind of allure in that, in eating up the feminine image and spitting her back out forcefully into a disarranged mise en place. My girl is, and always has been, vengeful. With my mouth she swallowed Plath’s line and rises with her red hair.
And I also like to leave in little tidbits that are meaningful but only in secret. Plath is a reference that no one but me (and now you all reading this) would understand — like many fem-identified people in their twenties, I had a Plath phase, I’ve read her first two collections of poetry and “Lady Lazarus,” though memed and clichéd to death at this point, did very much to save my life when I was nineteen and needed it most. I have complicated feelings about Plath, but whenever I think of my girl-self, so much of that person’s desire and survival was tied to her. For better or for worse. These are all my relationships with my most-read white writers, I think — indelible but painful. Formative, but later I realize the carving was done with a real knife.
The other piece of news I have is that my essay “Masculinity Is the Soft and Vulnerable Thing Inside Me,” first published in Electric Literature’s series Both/And, will be published in the print anthology version of Both/And. You can read the announcement about the book deal here. Kind of stunned to be published alongside all of these wonderful people I’ve admired for so long, but as a long-time Drag Race fan and drag aficionado, especially stunned to be put in the same book as Peppermint. Is this allowed? Still trying to process the good news and accept that my and Peppermint’s worlds have somehow collided.
Lastly, I don’t know about you all, but I’m still reeling from yesterday’s events. I don’t think I’m alone in already having been wildly pessimistic about the future, but that doesn’t exempt you from feeling these moments of deep dread. All I can do is beseech you to take care of yourself, take care of each other, and remember that our survival has always been a group project. Find your people, hold them close. Do what you can to prep and defend your community. Big words from me — I’m still learning how to do all of this. But I just have to try my best.