Trans Rights Readathon (and a published book review)

This post was first published on Tiffany’s Patreon page! The timing of publication on the Groundfire blog is offset by at least a week or so. 

Dear friends, 

We're a few days into the Trans Rights Readathon! Are you joining the Readathon this year? What are you planning to read, if so? 

I am doing the Readathon, as usual. The books I'm planning to read are at the bottom of this email. 

And I also have a new paper out, co-authored with some friends, about our experience reading two of Charlie Jane Anders' books together. (Our book club has continued on, and we just finished reading Martha Wells' Witch King together. We'll be starting Queen Demon soon - let me know if you want to join us!) You can read the paper at the linked journal page, and I've also attached the PDF. The journal is open access, and a lot of the papers in this issue are really lovely. 

The two books we reviewed are Never Say You Can't Survive, which is a non-fiction book about how writing stories can help us get through hard times; and Lessons in Magic and Disaster, which is a fiction book with multiple timelines about a trans witch (and a lot more than that).

It's nice to have the book review published during the Readathon, because these are both books by a trans woman, about trans experience (among many other things).

Here are the categories (from the Storygraph challenge page):

1. Transmasc and Trans Man Representation

   An author and/or main character who identifies as a trans man or on the masculine side of the trans experience, which can include people who view their gender along the expansive nonbinary spectrum.

   This year, we encourage readers to read a transmasc book by a BIPOC author.

2. Transfemme and Trans Woman Rep (207 added)

   An author and/or main character who identifies as a trans woman or on the feminine side of the trans experience, which can include people who view their gender along the expansive nonbinary spectrum.

   This year, we encourage readers to read a transfemme book with multiple trans characters for this prompt.

3. Nonbinary, Agender, Genderqueer, and Other Gender Expansive Rep

   A work by an author and/or featuring a main character who exists outside of the gender binary. This includes nonbinary, agender, genderqueer, genderfluid, and other gender expansive identities. For some people, this may mean identifying as both masculine and feminine; for others, it means being neither masculine nor feminine; and in some cases, this means identifying as a midpoint (or multiple shifting midpoints) between masc and femme.

   This year, we encourage readers to read a gender expansive rep book with diverse body representation for this prompt.

4. Intersectional Trans+ Rep Outside Your Own Experience

   A work by an author and/or featuring a main character who falls under the greater trans umbrella, including trans men, trans women, nonbinary, and other gender expansive identities, and who ALSO holds another intersectional identity, such having a different racial or cultural background than your own, or a disability you have not personally experienced.

5. 2Spirit, Indigiqueer and Indigenous Gender Expansive Rep

   A work by an author and/or featuring a main character who holds a gender identity or cultural role outside of the gender binary, and which exists outside of Western definitions of transness and/or queerness. Please note that these identities and terms are specific to the culture in which they originate. Examples include two-spirit identities in Native and First Nations cultures, hijra in South Asia, waria in Indonesia, and other indigenous identities that predate Western colonization. For this prompt, we do not require the author or character to self-identify as trans, but we DO require that the author be writing from their own cultural experience (in other words, no white authors telling 2S stories, etc.).

   Please be mindful of the language you use for each of these books as these identities and concepts do not always map one-to-one with Western LGBTQIA+ labels, and existed long before Westernized ideas of gender and sexuality.

6. A Book Featuring Trans Joy, Love, and/or Resistance

   The annual International Trans Day of Visibility is a day to celebrate trans joy, love, and resistance. Please use this prompt to read a work celebrating trans life.

7. A Book About Trans Youth and/or Imagining Trans Futures

   A work featuring Trans youth or imagining trans futures. This can be speculative fiction or sci-fi, a Young Adult/Middle Grade/Children's book, or any work celebrating trans youth and/or the building of a better world for trans people.

8. A Book by or Featuring Trans Elders, or a Trans History Book

   A work by or about trans elders, like a memoir or biography, or a trans history book

9. A Book Recommended by a Friend/Bookseller/Librarian

   A book recommended to you by a friend, a bookseller, or a librarian. The Trans Rights Readathon can be your friend! If you'd like one of our recommendations, check out our databases or social media profiles here.
   If you'd like recommendations from booksellers but don't know where to start, try these lists from trans-owned bookstores like The Nonbinarian, A Room of One's Own, Small Trans Library Dublin, or Firestorm Books.
   If you don't have a local library, you could use these resources from the Queer Liberation Library, the Ottawa Trans Library,Chicago Public Library, DC Public Library, New York Public Library, QUEERmdb Deutschland, TU Dublin Library, or from any library or librarian you find.

If you're doing the Readathon, Never Say You Can't Survive works for 'a book featuring trans joy, love, and/or resistance', and Lessons in Magic and Disaster works for 'transfemme and trans woman rep' and for 'nonbinary, agender, genderqueer, and other gender expansive rep' (in the form of Ro, the main character's partner).

The books I'm planning to read are:

1. The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas

   I finished this one a couple days ago and it was great. Aiden Thomas is trans, of Cuban and Mexican heritage, and lives in the United States. He's been on my tbr for ages, but I am still early in my love of YA and I hadn't read any of his books before this. I really enjoyed this book, and how rich and complex the characters are. The characters, even the antagonists, are all just people (though people who are also semidioses and have magical powers), and it's so skilfully done. I gave it 4.5 stars, and listened to the audiobook.

2. Woodworking by Emily St. James

   I'm 30% of the way through this one, and it's good. It's definitely Literary Fiction, which is a genre I don't read very often. (I am much more at home in romance, sci fi, and fantasy.) I am enjoying it, though. It's the story of two trans women in a small South Dakota town. One is the only out trans girl at her high school, Abigail, and one is her English teacher who has just come out to herself as trans, Erica. The audiobook does a burst of static every time Erica is deadnamed, so I can't listen to it in the evenings because it makes me startle every time. But it's good so far. Emily St. James is a trans woman (the readathon category is and/or on trans character/trans author, and I prefer to go with 'and'), and she's a television writer on Yellowjackets, which I haven't watched but I have heard is pretty good.

3. Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

   I am currently reading this for nonbinary rep (Newitz is nonbinary and so is one of the robots), but although the robots do have a wide range of body configurations, I don't think that's what the challenge authors mean by 'body diversity' so I might pick another book to read for this category. I picked this one because it's short, and because I'm also doing the Pop Sugar reading challenge this year, which has a category for reading two books by real life partners. So this, plus one more Charlie Jane Anders, checks that off for me. I'm 60% of the way through the audiobook. I am enjoying it, but I'm also having a lot of thoughts about it. A lot of reviews hate that it's about robot rights, published at a time when AI is actively and aggressively being used to erode human rights and destroy the environment. I am adamantly anti-AI personally, but I also think robots have been such a useful frame for writers exploring questions of justice, power, and personhood. I think some of the criticism the book has received is not very charitable. But I also see how the timing of this book is a bit unfortunate, and the fact that it's a near-future rather than a far-future (like Martha Wells' Murderbot or Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot) makes it much harder to avoid drawing a line between current iterations of AI and what the book is engaging with. Anyway, on the fence about it.

4. I haven't decided for sure, but I might read Talia Bhatt's Trans/Rad/Fem (I have the ebook), or Cameron Awkward Rich's The Terrible We: Thinking With Trans Maladjustment (in paper). Both are by trans authors of colour, and are non-fiction on my reading list for my PhD.

5. Weaving Us Together by Lay Maloney

   This is by an Australian Aboriginal author. Maloney is 'a young genderfluid storyteller of the Gumbaynggirr and Gunggandji nations and South Sea Islander heritage' and I really enjoyed this interview with them. My library doesn't have this, so I'll probably buy the ebook if I can't find it at Shelf Life.

6. Ancestors by adrienne maree brown

   I have the paper book (because I'm a Friend of AK Press - if you have the extra dollars for something, supporting this anarchist press is worth it!). I got about 15% of the way through and then paused the book because I just wasn't enjoying it as much as the first two in the series. But I think I'll finish it for the readathon, because I do love brown's politics and writing, and I might just not have been in the right mood for it earlier. I will report back! It definitely does count for love and resistance.

7. Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity edited by Lee Mandelo

   I bought the paper book of this short story collection when I was in Vancouver, and this is the perfect excuse to read it.

8. Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson

   I know it's a little weird to read a book about children for the trans history prompt, but I've had this paper book on my tbr for ages and it's another one that's relevant for my PhD. I really, really loved Gill-Peterson's Short History of Trans Misogyny so I'm looking forward to this one.

9. And I haven't picked my book for recommendation by a friend, librarian, or bookseller. Do you have a trans book you think I should read? Let me know! Maybe it will fill this category.

I definitely won't be finishing all nine books before the end of the month, but I'm going to read them all this year (and am hoping to knock off at least four more during the challenge - which runs until Trans Day of Visibility on March 31).

I was thinking about hosting a little book chat on the 31st, to talk about the books we've read for the challenge and the books we're planning to read throughout the rest of the year. Would you like to join me? Send me a message and I'll send you the zoom link.

In solidarity,

Tiffany