Ongoing Queerness: The Flourishing of Trans Women’s Literature in North America

• Thesis title in Czech: Queer na pokračování: Rozkvět trans ženské literatury v Severní Americe
• Thesis title in English: Ongoing Queerness: The Flourishing of Trans Women’s Literature in North America
• Key words: Transgender|trans ženy|trans literatura|queer|současná literatura|gender|Severní Amerika
• English key words: Transgender|trans women|trans literature|queer|contemporary literature|gender|North America
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2019/2020
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 12.11.2019
• Date of assignment: 13.11.2019
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 20.11.2019
• Date and time of defence: 10.09.2020 09:00
• Date of electronic submission: 04.08.2020
• Date of proceeded defence: 10.09.2020
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: doc. Erik Sherman Roraback, D.Phil.

Guidelines

The aim of this thesis is to focus on contemporary literature written by trans women in the United States and Canada and observe its development roughly over the past decade, but also doing so with an awareness of the complexity of intersecting identities and the flawed nature of such a separation. However, in some form or another, what we may call transgender women’s fiction and poetry is just now coming into its own as a developing literature and thanks to the relative smallness of the transgender writer community, many of the authors at its forefront know each other and their work often shares similar themes or even direct intertextual references. The pattern of these references, be they towards other trans writers or to queer writers more broadly, allows us to dive deeper into the background of their writings and to better understand the lives and experiences of not only the characters, but, in some cases, of the authors themselves, providing us with a more complete image of what the central concerns of transgender writers are and what literary strategies they employ to explore them.

Therefore, the core idea of this thesis is to look at the ways these seemingly heterogeneous works remain in discussion with each other, whether intentionally or subconsciously, both in their themes and in their choices of character archetypes. While it may be said that such patterns can be seen throughout literature generally, it remains true that the world of anglophone queer women writers remains largely insular – many of the authors are well-acquainted with the work of both their contemporaries and their historical peers and, as is the case among white trans women, interact with each other on a daily basis. Additionally, the target demographic for which transgender fiction is written is itself comprised almost exclusively of trans people, which allows the authors to write for a readership with a shared political viewpoint and lived experience. I believe that, to a large extent, it is thanks to the small number of semi-canonical works that many works of transgender women’s fiction oftentimes almost appear to be in dialogue with each other. As things continue to evolve and the number of published authors unavoidably grows, a summarisation of the current state of affairs could provide us with important insight not only into what transgender women’s fiction is like, but it also gives us a unique chance to observe the birth of a new genre in real time. To achieve this goal, I want to provide a general overview of what transgender literature is out there right now and what its constitutive elements may be and provide a detailed analysis of some of the more visible works (among them: Nevada, Small Beauty, Little Fish, Why Dust Shall Never Settle upon This Soul and A Place Called NO HOMELAND) to see how they either affirm or dispute the notion that trans literature may have a set of shared tropes and character archetypes

References

Fikce:
Aoki, Ryka. Why Dust Shall Never Settle upon This Soul. Biyuti Publishing, 2015.
Binnie, Imogen. Nevada. New York: Topside Press, 2013.
Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues. New York: Alyson Books, 2003.
Fitzpatrick, Cat and Casey Plett, eds. Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers. New York: Topside Press, 2017.
Hill-Meyer, Tobi, ed. Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic. Instar Books, 2017.
Plett, Casey. Little Fish. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018.
Thom, Kai Cheng. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir. Montreal: Metonymy Press, 2016.
Thom, Kai Cheng. A Place Called No Homeland. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017.
Tolbert, T.C. and Trace Peterson, eds. Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. New York: Nightboat Books, 2013.
wilson-yang, jia qing. Small Beauty. Montreal: Metonymy Press, 2016.
Kritika:
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. On Intersectionality: The Essential Writings of Kimberlé Crenshaw. New York: The New Press, 2017.
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
King, Nia, ed. Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives. Edited by Nia King. Self-published via Createspace, 2014.
Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2007.
Striker, Susan, ed. The Transgender Studies Reader vol. 1. Abingdon: Routledge, 2003.