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bennificial's review
challenging
emotional
informative
slow-paced
3.0
I liked the content of the book but I found it to be a little too long and the writing was fairly inaccessible at times.
onlyonebookshelf's review against another edition
The writing style was too opaque and academic
hannscurlock's review
5.0
I learned so much from the book. Something that I will return to is Snorton’s implementation of fungibility through a Black trans* lens, and it’s coupling with fugitively.
govgregabbott's review
4.0
heavy read, was hoping for more historical read rather than a collection of pieces framing both blackness and transness. still a solid read, would suggest it to anyone interested on the topic.
finnthehuman217's review against another edition
4.0
This book took me a while to get through. I’m really good with theory but some academic work is inaccessible if you’re not up on the words. I did find the 3rd part fascinating. Especially when the author talked about the Christine Jorgensen doubles and how the black press vilified black trans women while Jorgensen was revered for her transition. It’s all very weird. I also liked the discussion of the erasure of black identity regarding the story of Phillip Devine and Brandon teena. Very insightful. One of the more gruesome chapters was that on the mothers of modern Gynecology.
emmaito's review
4.0
i recently posted how i thought the book a queer history of the united states was lacking & was glad to follow it with a more nuanced look at gender & race in Black on both sides: a racial history of trans identity, written by c. riley snorton. the back of this book states that; “Black on both sides identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials, c. riley snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable.”
this book isn’t a straightforward history, but rather a self-described meditation on a variety of archival materials, including mid-19th & 20th c. medical illustrations, pickup notices, fugitive-slave narratives, afromodernist literature, 20th c. journalistic accounts of Black people ‘exposed’ as living in/as different genders, true crime books, documentary film, and poetry. reading this takes the right headspace, a good chunk of time to really get through it, & definitely feels extremely “academic,” but im really blown away by how this is framed & snorton’s critical analysis. i learned so much from this & will absolutely be revisiting this book going forward.
this book isn’t a straightforward history, but rather a self-described meditation on a variety of archival materials, including mid-19th & 20th c. medical illustrations, pickup notices, fugitive-slave narratives, afromodernist literature, 20th c. journalistic accounts of Black people ‘exposed’ as living in/as different genders, true crime books, documentary film, and poetry. reading this takes the right headspace, a good chunk of time to really get through it, & definitely feels extremely “academic,” but im really blown away by how this is framed & snorton’s critical analysis. i learned so much from this & will absolutely be revisiting this book going forward.
cowboyjonah's review
DNF @ page 55, I'll come back to this eventually but the writing style is too academic for what I'm looking for right now