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graveyardpansy's review
4.0
definitely very thought-provoking and at times really wonderful and reflective. focuses heavily on themes of trans art and culture in ways that cis-lead projects typically do not, and intertwines with politics in very refreshing ways. a lot of the essays, and the interviews/conversations particularly, really resonated with me.
that said, this book is /expensive/ and not super accessible through many libraries, and it took a long time for the softcover to come out. it makes me wonder if it is truly an accessible piece of media for those who deserve words and imagery like this.
that said, this book is /expensive/ and not super accessible through many libraries, and it took a long time for the softcover to come out. it makes me wonder if it is truly an accessible piece of media for those who deserve words and imagery like this.
anpu325's review
4.0
I would give something between 3 and 4 stars. There were very profound and insightful ideas that got me thinking in new ways and I got some new avenues of reading to pursue out of it. Some of the essays and interviews were great, others I didn't find as interesting. I feel like I only understood like 70% of this book though, with much effort, and I kind of wish it was written in a more accessible way for trans folks outside of the art world who don't have an academic background in queer theory. It was so dense and I felt relieved and accomplished when I finally got through all nearly 400 pages of it. All of the essays and interviews were the perfect length though, which made it easier to keep moving through the book. As soon as I got tired of one essay, it was over and on to the next! Really an essential discussion on the visibility/vulnerability of trans people in the contemporary US. I appreciated that it centered Black and Latinx trans women and femmes who are the people in our community that the double edged sword of visibility/vulnerability cuts the deepest. For all of the great ideas it was borderline unreadable at many points due to the convoluted prose in most of the essays, but that's pretty standard for queer theory. I think the approach of interviewing artists and activists and including essays from activists, scholars, and artists was a great way to try to get at a complex and nuanced topic with few easy answers.
ralowe's review
5.0
first off i want to regretfully express my personal disappointment with the otherwise outstanding editors reina gossett, eric stanley and johanna burton. basically, for the last year or so, my close colleague and spiritual confidant, eric, had maliciously left me under the impression that this entire 500-page anthology was comprised of various essays written about the towering genius of craig calderwood, my dearest longtime companion. i'm personally deeply humiliated to have spent all that time looking forward to see what some of my favorite thinkers, creatives and activists had to say about craig's massive catalog of artistic splendor. but friends, i'm ruined. it was simply not meant to be. there is in fact only one essay, by loyal devotee of the exhilerating outer horizons of taste, nicole archer, that features craig's work (pg 294). while i am grateful to see that it was obviously objectively absolutely necessary to open the essay with craig, there is so much more to explore. pretty much 500-pages worth. instead the diligent editors gather together voices that collectively produce the effect of weilding the body as a frequently ungovernable, illegible and unruly active material relation in motion with/in/through/among/beyond/before/to frustrated institutions of legalistic state power. these pieces in diverse and indirect, accidental and conversant collaboration seek to deeply unsettle and delay capture within the violent, reductive, simplifying and commodifying order of authoritarian knowledge production. trangender in this anthology is plainly nothing less than a site of limitless insurgent and fugitive possibility. aside from the let-down of there literally maybe only being 3 pages out of hundreds that have anything to do with craig, i predict that this will be one of those books that will be owned, perhaps gifted, but not actually read. this has to do with it being a book published by a museum. it will look traffic-stoppingly gorgeous on a coffee table and is jawdropping to flip through. what most will most likely miss is the amount of careful attention the editors put into the content of the essays. the forceful poetic manifesto of transgender as lived and embodied potential is no more artfully described than in the essay collaboratively written by park mcarthur and constantina zavitsanos (pg 235). also definitely not to be missed are the more anthropological pieces like treva ellison's amazing piece about sir lady java, stamatina gregory and jeanne vaccaro's co-authored piece about the conflicts transpeople endure in the art world, and abram j lewis' piece about older radical trans organizing. in particular lewis' essays gets across the body's mutinous amorphousness in the company of interspecies and extraterrestrial others, where inspiring anti-authoritarian collective labor that knows no boundary can happen, where flourishings that transgress kind to find kin can be sought and fulfilled. *trap door* seeks to affirm transgender enduring beyond its alleged tipping-point as incessantly anti-institutional anti-normative anti-state. this is no more clear than in fellow gay shamer toshio meronek's conversation with miss major and cece macdonald (pg 23). i close with a quote from major that describes the situation: "right now, we're the flavor of the month"У"Уwe're the neapolitian"У"Уbut mainstream gays and lesbians still don't care about us; they're not doing things to help keep us safe or to help promote us. they spent millions and millions of dollars [lobbying] for the right to get married. "чoh yay, let's get married.' ok, what about taking some of that billion dollars to get kids through school without [being bullied], to help transgender people keep it together through all the stuff that they have to suffer and get the help they need to become stable"_ i don't want [a logo tv's "чtrailblazer honors'] award; i'm not in it for all that shit. i'm here to make sure that my girls avoid the crap that i had to go through; you don't have to turn a trick and suck dick and sell drugs to survive. so, i would have wanted the award's producers to at least show that they care about us. marsha, sylvia, and i were friends, and they're calling me to speak on film, but posthumous awards aren't the same as care."ќ
riotsquirrrl's review
4.0
Rounded up from 3.5.
This collection is a mixed bag of pieces. Theoretical, practical, art, activism.
Thematically I think that Gossett did a good job at linking these somewhat disparate pieces together. The problem is one of momentum, though; Gossett spaces out her more theoretical pieces in between more approachable pieces such as roundtable discussions, which I actually found to be more difficult than, say, grouping all of the theoretical pieces together. Which is part of why it sat open halfway, unread, for about 3 months. While reading it, I kept thinking, who is this collection for, really?
I'd also like to thank the person who checked this book out before me as they put pencil marks next to all of the more theoretical articles in the index. It turns out that they were the articles that I liked the least but ignored all of the articles about more concrete ideas, such as archives, political organizing, and history-making. And they put a question mark next to Sara Ahmed's "An Affinity of Hammers," which imo they should not have passed on.
The main question that is the backbone of this book is, "what is the value of increased visibility & representation?" What might have been an interesting conversation in the summer of 2016 but is somewhat moot in October of 2020. Like no, no, please stop the representation! We would like to *not* be the visible part of the conservative backlash now.
I appreciate the introduction to people such as Chris E Vargas and MOTHRA, and Kai Lumumba Barrow. But in 5+ years, who will even read this?
This collection is a mixed bag of pieces. Theoretical, practical, art, activism.
Thematically I think that Gossett did a good job at linking these somewhat disparate pieces together. The problem is one of momentum, though; Gossett spaces out her more theoretical pieces in between more approachable pieces such as roundtable discussions, which I actually found to be more difficult than, say, grouping all of the theoretical pieces together. Which is part of why it sat open halfway, unread, for about 3 months. While reading it, I kept thinking, who is this collection for, really?
I'd also like to thank the person who checked this book out before me as they put pencil marks next to all of the more theoretical articles in the index. It turns out that they were the articles that I liked the least but ignored all of the articles about more concrete ideas, such as archives, political organizing, and history-making. And they put a question mark next to Sara Ahmed's "An Affinity of Hammers," which imo they should not have passed on.
The main question that is the backbone of this book is, "what is the value of increased visibility & representation?" What might have been an interesting conversation in the summer of 2016 but is somewhat moot in October of 2020. Like no, no, please stop the representation! We would like to *not* be the visible part of the conservative backlash now.
I appreciate the introduction to people such as Chris E Vargas and MOTHRA, and Kai Lumumba Barrow. But in 5+ years, who will even read this?
sebswann's review
5.0
“But if I am black or I am trans, and if people can’t see that, then what am I? Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the difference between the self we hold inside of us and the self that is named by others.”
If you like anthologies about trans identity and visibility; through essays and conversations, this anthology grapples with questions and themes related to identity, art, performance, beauty, activism, and the contradictions of trans visibility. The texts range from free-flowing accessible conversations to academic theorizing with an elevated vocabulary; for me, they were hit or miss.
If you like anthologies about trans identity and visibility; through essays and conversations, this anthology grapples with questions and themes related to identity, art, performance, beauty, activism, and the contradictions of trans visibility. The texts range from free-flowing accessible conversations to academic theorizing with an elevated vocabulary; for me, they were hit or miss.
djinnofthedamned's review
4.0
I honestly didn't know what to expect when I decided to buy this book on a whim. I was looking for trans theory and trans cultural production beyond the usual suspects of the academy. So I bought this whim on impulse, and took a long time reading it.
There are so many things I loved about this book. Beyond its extremely high production values, the essays and conversations between cultural producers, academics, and artists contain so many gems and so many profound insights. There are essays about the ethics of cultural production, the struggles of curation and the construction of cultural/collective memory, histories of trans resistance that can be found in art, film, etc.
By the same token, I was left wondering about a lot of things. I wonder who realistically could afford a $50 art book. I understand price has to compensate for production values. Yet by the same token the price alone made me question who is the intended audience of this book. If its widely understood that TPOC, particularly TWOC, live below the poverty line, I wondered how they're supposed to access this book. In the five years since this book has been published, I wonder how price point and inaccessibility affects its reception to the very communities that its documenting and writing about.
This question was further complicated by the inclusion of theorists like Sara Ahmed. While I appreciated Sara Ahmed's essay, I did wonder whether it was appropriate to be included. I really didn't care to see a cisgender voice in a volume about trans cultural production. Above and beyond Ahmed's name recognition, I think it was a missed opportunity to forfeit the politics of academic celebrity that is understood to help sell books and actually include a theorist who could effectively write an essay on the same subject, just from a different take. I would have wanted to hear from someone who I don't know, who doesn't have name recognition, but has something important to say nonetheless.
All and all I enjoyed this book, but it did leave me wondering "who is this for?" Maybe such an underlying question and the embodied contradictions of assembling an anthology is intentional. I could see that, as much as I think its kitschy and unnecessary given that embodied contradictions are always a thing in anthologies.
There are so many things I loved about this book. Beyond its extremely high production values, the essays and conversations between cultural producers, academics, and artists contain so many gems and so many profound insights. There are essays about the ethics of cultural production, the struggles of curation and the construction of cultural/collective memory, histories of trans resistance that can be found in art, film, etc.
By the same token, I was left wondering about a lot of things. I wonder who realistically could afford a $50 art book. I understand price has to compensate for production values. Yet by the same token the price alone made me question who is the intended audience of this book. If its widely understood that TPOC, particularly TWOC, live below the poverty line, I wondered how they're supposed to access this book. In the five years since this book has been published, I wonder how price point and inaccessibility affects its reception to the very communities that its documenting and writing about.
This question was further complicated by the inclusion of theorists like Sara Ahmed. While I appreciated Sara Ahmed's essay, I did wonder whether it was appropriate to be included. I really didn't care to see a cisgender voice in a volume about trans cultural production. Above and beyond Ahmed's name recognition, I think it was a missed opportunity to forfeit the politics of academic celebrity that is understood to help sell books and actually include a theorist who could effectively write an essay on the same subject, just from a different take. I would have wanted to hear from someone who I don't know, who doesn't have name recognition, but has something important to say nonetheless.
All and all I enjoyed this book, but it did leave me wondering "who is this for?" Maybe such an underlying question and the embodied contradictions of assembling an anthology is intentional. I could see that, as much as I think its kitschy and unnecessary given that embodied contradictions are always a thing in anthologies.
littlefemur's review
Dense! Some of the essays were easy to read and others felt like a slog