A review by ralowe
Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

5.0

i have been inspired by the work of c. riley snorton since seeing him and kai green presenting papers on a panel about black trans embodiment five years ago at the american studies association meeting in d.c. having the pleasure of tracking his development of this grammar where in the two terms (black and trans) can betray a restive oscillatable mutuality, *black on both sides* advances an argument that deepens the discipline. resisting the rhetorical reduction of these two terms to equivalence should appear obvious. snorton challenges this divide and conquer to address moments from the reality of shared exposure to premature death. when snorton turns his attention to the texts included in *three negro classics*, he's trying to show the blackness and trans-ness already present and co-constitutive in booker t. washington, dubois and james weldon johnson's preoccupation with an authoritarian maternal surrogacy and responsibility, a spillersian maneuver to affirm "yes"ќ to the mother within: an invigorating black trans feminist politics. though snorton disavows the job of the historian from the get-go, these consequences are always ineluctably historical, and this revelation takes the usual talk of "passing"ќ to task. honoring an anoriginal non-essential difference allows for lived experience as non-contradiction, as something eluding deceit and deceiving elusion, as the history that keeps on happening. i can see this strategy as nothing other than swelling our ranks and collective flourishing. the writing here is economic and dense. in one extremely enjoyable moment, snorton also takes on, through the strategies just described and throughout, the "fungible"ќ as such, a quality observed to describe the non-human. but with the conception of a body that refuses an essential state through a refusal to body or embody, this fungibility might become the power of unceasing variability and inclusiveness that surpasses passing toward a more robust social reciprocity. the insight is the histories of disposability and the viscera of medical science wreaking havoc as opened up in the book's first chapter. snorton here juxtaposes the earliest examples of gynecology, entering it into a trans studies canon's knowledge production concerning the reorganization of flesh and tissues, how these knowledges and the subjects they form still must contend with legacies of unbearable antiblackness.