50books_poc | Entries tagged with transgender

(Full book title doesn't fit in the subject; it is The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male.)

Note: Max Valerio is the same person as Anita Valerio, as published in This Bridge Called My Back, which I know has been reviewed here. It would be nice if we could easily find all his works together through the tagging system, but I can't think of a way to do that without misgendering him. Any thoughts?

Max Valerio is a trans man (like me) who spent many years living in San Francisco (where I'm from). You might think there'd be a lot in his memoir that I could relate to, but for the most part you'd be wrong.

Oh, there is some. His portrait of the life and atmosphere of San Francisco in the 90s is pitch-perfect and often quite funny. (He should write a novel about the lesbian punk scene then.) I was nodding along to his struggles with deciding to transition and sifting out the right from the wrong information about trans people, and his worries about whether he would lose all his gay and lesbian friends if he became "straight". (He lost some -- so did I.)

( What I did not nod along to (warning: discusses problematic views of rape) )

Anyway, goes without saying I can't recommend the book. I did enjoy the parts of the memoir that weren't bogged down in sexist and transphobic nonsense, but that's about all I can say. It's a damn shame.

a: Valerio Max Wolf, genre: memoir, subject: transgender, au ethnicity: Native American (Blackfoot), Latino

zeborah

(A lightly-edited dump of my Goodreads reviews.)

Suckerpunch by Hernandez, David
Hooked me in at the start but the way events followed each other more realistically than determined by a story shape didn't quite work for me. (There was a story shape, it was just more in the gaps between the events.

Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1) by Butler, Octavia E.
So many consent issues... Very good: it's got the claustrophobia, the every-exit-is-a-deadend feel, that I'd normally associate with horror, but manages to retain an optimism about it. The aliens are convincinly alien, and the frustration of their refusal to listen is steadfast without becoming unbelievable.

Straight - A novel in the Irish-Maori tradition by O'Leary, Michael
Straight is the second book in the trilogy; I came to it without having read the first, but felt it stood alone well enough that I had no trouble following the plot. Unfortunately that plot -- the protagonist discovering his father may have been a Nazi, then getting blackmailed and kidnapped by Nazis -- was way too melodramatic for me to take seriously. The prose (especially the dialogue) clunked badly for me, too. I did like the motif of dreamland vs reality vs realism though: that played out well.

My Name Is Number 4 by Ye, Ting-xing
Most disasters bring people and communities together; it seems as if the Cultural Revolution was designed to tear them apart. But this book shows that the struggle to survive and to keep relationships alive is always worth making. --Excuse shallow triteness; reading this book in the aftermath of earthquake I have deeper thoughts on disasters and communities but verbalising is harder especially for fear of simplifying. It was a good book anyway.

People-faces, The by Cherrington, Lisa
This is mostly Nikki's story, of how she's affected by her brother's mental illness and her journey in understanding it - caught between Māori and Pākehā models of understanding - and her journey alongside that of getting to know herself and her strengths. Her grandmother tells her that the dolphin Tepuhi is her guardian, but her grandmother is demonstrably not infallible and with the repeated point that Joshua is of the sea while Nikki is of the land, I think the book bears out that the real/more effective guardian for her is the pīwaiwaka.

Her brother's story is told in the gaps between, and completes the book.

Despite the focus on Nikki and Joshua, we get to see various other points of view, showing the further impact on the rest of their family and their motivations. Some of the point of view shifts are a bit clunky, for example when we get a single scene from the Pākehā doctor's point of view, or just a couple from Nikki's boyfriend.

But this is well-told; the author (of Ngāti Hine) is a clinical psychologist and has worked in Māori mental health services, and the emotions of the story ring very true to me.

Cereus Blooms at Night: A Novel by Mootoo, Shani
This was a fantastic read but at times a very hard one; serious trigger warnings for child abuse (verbal, physical, sexual).

It begins as a beautifully sweet story about racial and sexual and gender identity; about family separations made by force or by choice, and about forbidden liaisons both healthy and unhealthy. Set in the country of Lantanacamara, colonised by the Shivering Northern Wetlands -- more an open code than fantasy countries -- the story focuses on three generations of locals, straight and gay, cis and trans, more and less inculturated by Wetlandish education. The narrator begins by disclaiming any significant role in the story; instantly I want to know more about him, and (though he was right that this is more Mala's story) I was not disappointed.

The main story, switching among its several timelines, grows darker and winds tighter with perfect pacing. Revelations are neither too delayed nor too forced. And as it heads towards the catastrophe we've foreseen, through horror worse than we could have imagined at the start, so it brings us towards its equally inevitable -- and no less satisfying -- eucatastrophe.

pauraque

This is the memoir of Jin Xing, a child of Korean immigrants to China, who was blessed with extraordinary talent as a dancer. Her gift was noticed at a young age, and she trained with the People's Liberation Army dance troupe. As an adult, she took the opportunity to study and perform in other nations around the world, and during her travels she realized that she was not a gay man, but was in fact a straight woman, and that she wanted to medically transition. She became one of the first people to have an officially recognized legal gender change in China, in 1996(!).

In the book, events and memories pass by quickly, painting a not very detailed but more impressionistic picture of her life. This happened, and another time this happened, and here's another thing... It's not one of those memoirs that could just as easily be a novel. She's just describing memories that stand out to her, with not a lot of "story" in between.

Let me just say, I am not Asian, but I am trans, so I approached this book as both an insider and an outsider, and I found that hard to reconcile at times. Jin Xing grew up in a world I know very little about, and part of me wanted to be accepting of her thoughts on her identity because it's framed by a culture that is foreign to me, while the rest of me balked at views she put forth that felt very antiquated and not at all trans-positive.

( Read more... )

tags: a: Jin Xing, w-a: Texier Catherine, Korean-Chinese, genre: memoir, subject: transgender

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

31. Nu Nu Yi, Smile As They Bow

This short novel (translated from Burmese by Alfred Birnbaum and Thi Thi Aye) takes place during the week-long Taungbyon nat religious festival, a annual festival located in a small, rural village which swells dramatically with pilgrims and other people who come to attend. The narration skips between different people at the festival, from pilgrims to the spirit mediums and musicians who make their living off such festivals, to pickpockets who take advantage of the crowds. The main character is Daisy Bond, a 50-ish gay/transgender (the Western categories don't really map onto the Burmese characters) well-known spirit medium. Daisy's relationship with Min Min, his 18-year-old servant/factotum/lover is the center of the plot, but the book seems concerned less with a typical straight-forward chain of events than with showing the chaotic feel of the festival, jumping backward and forward in time, constantly introducing new characters and perspectives, making and breaking connections.

The book is very short (about 100 pages), so it's an easy, fun read. As an American reader, I knew very little about the festival, nats, the role of spirit mediums, or gay/transgender people in Myanmar culture, and the book does not take the time to explain any of the connotations of these. Which, of course, it's under no obligation to do, but I feel sure that I was missing a lot of depth from the story. It would have been nice if the translators had included a few pages with cultural information. Despite my own problems, I still recommend this book, even if you (like me) know very little about Myanmar. It was never hard to follow the plot or sympathize with the characters, and I found it to be a very enjoyable read.

Current Mood: busy

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

I don't usually review manga here, because I don't count it as books, but I really wanted to share these two series.

IS~Otoko Demo Onna Demo Nai Sei~ (IS~Neither Male Nor Female~) by Rokuhana Chiyo is a story about intersex people. The first couple chapters are stand-alones, but the bulk of the manga (15+ volumes ongoing) is about a boy named Haru.

I really love this series because while it does have its flaws, it's the first series I've ever seen that deals realistically with intersexuality. The author has worked closely with an online intersex group to make sure she has her facts straight and isn't getting offensive or appropriative, which shouldn't impress me as much as it does, because it should be how everyone approaches fiction, but we all know that's not how it works, so I do admire her for how respectful she's been with this topic, especially considering the fact that her original idea was for a generic fantasy story that had a "hermaphrodite" hero/ine and it was only when she started poking around online for research that she realised, hey, this could be offensive, and then trashed that idea and wrote this story instead.

I made a long, rambling post here the other day with a longer summary, as well as what I love and don't love about it (long story short: it's wonderful in so many ways, but disappointing heteronormative). Despite my reservations, I highly, highly recommend it.

The first eight volumes have been scanlated and can be found online in English here. Unfortunately there is no official English translation. If you read Japanese, there are 15 volumes out so far, with vol. 16 due to come out next month. You can order them on Amazon Japan.

Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son) by Shimura Takako is about trans kids. The main characters are Nitori Shuuichi (aka Nitorin) and Takatsuki Yoshino. Takatsuki is ftm and Nitorin is mtf. There is also Ariga Makoto (Mako), another mtf kid in their year at school, and Yuki, a trans woman they meet and become friends with. The story starts when the kids are in 5th grade and they are currently in 8th.

I love this story so, so much. Unlike with IS, I really have no reservations about this and love it wholeheartedly. (I mean, I could wish for it to be more queer, yes, but I'm not afraid the eventual ending might disappoint me, the way I am with IS.) I have never read another manga like this. Japanese media often features okamas (a term that can be applied to trans women, drag queens, or just (usually effeminate) gay men), but they're usually comic relief or bad guys. Even when they are sympathetic, they're likely to be very minor characters, and like in western media, it's much, much harder to find representations of trans guys.

This is your basic slice of life manga, just following the characters as they grow up. There are so many little things that ring true. I think one of my favorite bits has been Chii-chan, a new girl they meet in 7th grade, who occasionally comes to school in a boys' uniform, or wearing a tie with her girls' uniform instead of the ribbon she's supposed to. She's not trans or genderqueer, just likes doing what she wants to do, and I love how Takatsuki envies her, because for Takatsuki it's not that easy because it actually means something to wear boys' clothes.

This one also has no official translation, but has been completely scanlated, to the most recent chapter available in Japan (download here or read online here). If you read Japanese, you can order from Amazon Japan or download the first eight volumes here. There are currently 8+ volumes, with vol. 9 scheduled to come out this autumn (sadly, this one is released only one volume per year).

Oh, and for both of these, I read them in Japanese, so I have no idea whether the translations are any good or not. :-/