A review by camillatd
Trumpet by Jackie Kay

emotional slow-paced

3.0

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Trumpet is undoubtedly good literature, but is it a good trans story? I would argue it maybe… isn’t a trans story at all. It’s a story about a trans person who is completely decentered from their own story, their own narrative. It’s about the stories that cis people tel themselves and others about this trans person, this man, after he’s gone. I raise an eyebrow at Jackie Kay’s claim of little research—I wonder, did she speak to trans people, trans men, while writing this book? I know it was the nineties—and I don’t discredit how groundbreaking this book was. Doubly, triply so for a Black lesbian writer writing the story of a Black trans man. I understand not wanting to write Joss’ perspective (almost at all)—it’s not the story at hand here, and it’s not Jackie’s voice. But that does leave me wanting—I envision more queer stories and queer futures in literature, more trans voices and writers and lives. Trans stories with trans people front and center, alive and complicated and full of life.
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