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Reviews tagging 'Slavery'
Negra por los cuatro costados : una historia racial de la identidad trans by Javier . . . [et al. Sáez Castán, C. Riley Snorton
6 reviews
saturn_rage's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Snorton’s accounting here is meditative, intricate, and often devastating. I’m particularly captivated by their accounting of different identities as “fungible” or not, something that I will continue to meditate on.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Slavery, Genocide, Medical content, Medical trauma, Rape, Murder, Sexism, Racism, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, Trafficking, and Transphobia
rorikae's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.25
'Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity' by C. Riley Snorton is a thoroughly researched book that looks at gender and race, with an eye to the Black trans experience. Snorton does an excellent job of providing background information on the part that gender played in Black people's experiences during slavery and how that has set a precedent for how Black trans people are treated in the United States. They do this through highlighting the specific lived experiences of different individuals throughout history.
This book is very much a historical text. I would definitely recommend gong into this book knowing that it is an academic text and can be quite dense due to use of academic language. I think this would be a good book to read alongside a book that deals with the current lived experiences of Black trans individuals as it provides a lot of important context. If you are interested in the concepts that it tackles I would definitely recommend it. Just go in knowing that it is both a hard and important read that is going to take time to digest and fully process.
This book is very much a historical text. I would definitely recommend gong into this book knowing that it is an academic text and can be quite dense due to use of academic language. I think this would be a good book to read alongside a book that deals with the current lived experiences of Black trans individuals as it provides a lot of important context. If you are interested in the concepts that it tackles I would definitely recommend it. Just go in knowing that it is both a hard and important read that is going to take time to digest and fully process.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Racism, Sexual violence, Transphobia, Grief, Murder, Slavery, Police brutality, Violence, and Hate crime
therainbowshelf's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
4.0
I don't feel quite qualified to review this academic text because I don't have a strong theoretical background in queer, gender, and race studies. It seems like the author delves deeply into the historic texts and theory to make compelling points about race, gender, and trans identities.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Sexism, Slavery, Medical trauma, Transphobia, Torture, Misogyny, and Racism
blackcatkai's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
a book full of extremely useful & important information about the history of black & trans bodies. clearly very well researched and presented. it does read very dry/textbook-like which can make it hard to read straight through as a non-scholar, but knowing that going in helps. I, personally, took breaks while reading.
if you have interest in this topic or a wish to be more informed, I highly recommend.
if you have interest in this topic or a wish to be more informed, I highly recommend.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Homophobia, Colonisation, Ableism, Transphobia, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Classism
Moderate: Death, Slavery, Hate crime, and Sexism
stevia333k's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
4.0
I didn't really understand this book that well. However, there was a part at around 75% where they were analyzing news reports on trans people & the popularity of those reports alongside era typical transphobia, and that was helpful (especially since I saw a lawyer TikTok talk about the difference between Jorgensen's coverage & today's coverage & it was like boo bitch)
Anyways there's also 2 parts that were helpful too:
1. the racist enslavement origins of gynecology helped explain why that field gets very cissexist & pro-natal & anti-choice (as well as why white women buy into rationalization & conservativism)
2. Discussion of comparing enslavement-to-freedom narratives with gender transition narratives.
The book pointed out why Foucault is unreliable. The book uses language similar to Jacques Donzelot's "The Policing Of Families" that was an awkward contradiction. I will say this book hammered it into my head that enslaved black women were used as wet nurses for white kids. Considering Donzelot's book traces the school to prison pipeline back to regulating wet nurses in the ancien regime, this means the systems have major differences (for example, Donzelot's book really only mentions race once when describing an exceptional defense given for an Algerian kid).
So overall the book was good, though some parts such as the "boys don't cry" movie review felt like literature class reports. This book
Anyways there's also 2 parts that were helpful too:
1. the racist enslavement origins of gynecology helped explain why that field gets very cissexist & pro-natal & anti-choice (as well as why white women buy into rationalization & conservativism)
2. Discussion of comparing enslavement-to-freedom narratives with gender transition narratives.
The book pointed out why Foucault is unreliable. The book uses language similar to Jacques Donzelot's "The Policing Of Families" that was an awkward contradiction. I will say this book hammered it into my head that enslaved black women were used as wet nurses for white kids. Considering Donzelot's book traces the school to prison pipeline back to regulating wet nurses in the ancien regime, this means the systems have major differences (for example, Donzelot's book really only mentions race once when describing an exceptional defense given for an Algerian kid).
So overall the book was good, though some parts such as the "boys don't cry" movie review felt like literature class reports. This book
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery, Rape, Hate crime, Murder, Colonisation, Deadnaming, Medical trauma, Outing, Pregnancy, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, and Transphobia
mmcloe's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Very challenging read, but necessarily so given the weight of the topics discussed and the resistance to historical flattening of Black lives, especially Black trans lives. Almost every chapter was a wonderfully deep reservoir of scholarly tools and new lenses on old history that were very helpful for me thinking through how different bodies have been treated as fungible and fluid by force and how others have taken that condition and used it to express novel ways of living that are still future-facing today. For all of the author's many references (the book also served as one of the most robust citation and reading list I've ever encountered), I'm surprised there wasn't more of a reference to Puar, especially in the chapter on Christine Jorgensen. It's incredibly interesting to think how a single white model trans woman can be used to overshadow the lives of Black trans women, and I think this analysis would really complement understandings of homonationalism across the world. Much to think about!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Transphobia, Homophobia, Sexual violence, Racial slurs, Hate crime, Racism, Slavery, Violence, Ableism, Rape, Medical trauma, and Misogyny
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