Queer Oz: L. Frank Baum's Trans Tales and Other Astounding Adventures in Sex and Gender

by Tison Pugh

Regardless of his own sexual orientation, L. Frank Baum’s fictions revel in queer, trans, and other transgressive themes. Baum’s life in the late 1800s and early 1900s coincided with the rise of sexology in the Western world, as a cascade of studies heightened awareness of the complexity of human sexuality. His years of productivity also coincided with the rise of children’s literature as a unique field of artistic creation. Best known for his Oz series, Baum produced a staggering number of children’s and juvenile book series under male and female pseudonyms, including the Boy Fortune Hunters series, the Aunt Jane’s Nieces series, and the Mary Louise series, along with many miscellaneous tales for young readers.

Baum envisioned his fantasy works as progressive fictions, aspiring to create in the Oz series “a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.” In line with these progressive aspirations, his works are often sexually progressive as well, with surprisingly queer and trans touches that reject the standard fairy-tale narrative path toward love and marriage. From Ozma of Oz’s backstory as a boy named Tip to the genderless character Chick the Cherub, from the homosocial adventures of his Boy Fortune Hunters to the determined rejection of romance for Aunt Jane’s Nieces, Queer L. Frank Baum's Trans Tales and Other Astounding Adventures in Sex and Gender shows how Baum utilized the freedoms of children’s literature, in its carnivalesque celebration of a world turned upside-down, to reimagine the meanings of gender and sexuality in early twentieth-century America and to re-envision them for the future.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT

234 pages, Hardcover

Published April 21, 2023

About the author

Tison Pugh is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Queering Medieval Genres and Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature and has published on children’s literature in such journals as Children’s Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Marvels and Tales.

Reviews

[Manic Booksy Dreamgirl · Rating 1 out of 5]

The truism "If you can't put it simply you don't know it well enough" comes screaming to mind attempting to read this.

Horrendously overwritten. Often when you actually parse through the sentances you find theres nothing of substance being said, just an assemblege of big words strung together for impact.

Really dissapointing.

[Cera · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's hard to take something so pretentious seriously when it uses the word gaydar four times in as many sentences just in the opening. This was a slog. And rather than use the source material as a lens of the times to genuinely support the premise, they twist every word and name that can be construed as gay currently into a modern interpretation of how those words and names might be perceived now.

Something as simple as Tippetarius, Tip for short, "connotes phallic
images". 💁‍♀️🤦‍♀️ To whom?

"Tip's adventures than to his sex as
the story unfolds until the surprising revelation that the witch Mombi trans- formed an infant girl into this young boy. Tip initially resists retransitioning from boy to girl- "Why, Im no Princess Ozma-I'm not a girl! ... I don't want to be a girl"--but she eventually accepts her female identity and regal duty to rule as a queen instead of as a king."

"Ozma's magical transition
demonstrates the ease with
which genders and sexes are
swapped in Oz."

"But she's a girl now, and the sweetest, loveliest girl in all the world. "Zeb is awed by her beauty: "Here [Zeb| found Dorothy seated
beside a young girl so marvelously beautiful that the boy stopped suddenly with a gasp of admiration". As discussed in the following chapter, Baum frequently refrains from portraying heteroerotic attraction and so this moment is no-
table not merely for Zeb's admiration of Ozma's beauty but for his utter embrace of her trans identity. Apparently pansexual in his orientation. male identity and regal duty to rule as a queen instead of as a king."

Entirely missing the very fact, Ozma is being "embraced" as her original gender, not her transgender identity. Not to mention the "ease" with which genders are swapped in Ozma and Tip's case, the author acknowledges and then completely ignores both instances of gender swapping being entirely nonconsensual!

And don't get me started on every stereotype the author used to reframe L Frank Baum as anything other than how he presented himself. In 2023 I didn't know interest in musical theater and being an author of a book on window dressings was something we used to deduce sexual orientation, and certainly not in something published as and by someone so "educated".

[Bobby Fort · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tison Pugh’s Queer Oz is an ambitious academic work that analyzes the Oz books—and other writings by L. Frank Baum—through a queer theoretical lens. Pugh’s central argument is that Baum’s fantastical worlds contain underlying themes of gender fluidity, queer desire, and nontraditional relationships, even if these elements aren’t overtly acknowledged in the text or authorial intent.

But this is also where the book invites scrutiny. For readers skeptical of critical readings that seem to project contemporary identities and ideologies onto historical works, Queer Oz may feel like it stretches the source material. Characters like Tip/Ozma, or the same-sex friendships of Scarecrow and Tin Man, are reinterpreted in ways that arguably say more about modern frameworks than about Baum’s actual storytelling intent.

That’s not to say Pugh is unaware of this. He does take care to position his arguments within the context of Baum’s time, avoiding direct claims that Baum was intentionally writing “queer narratives.” Still, the interpretive leaps can sometimes feel like they rely heavily on inference, metaphor, and symbolic association rather than textual evidence. If you come to the book wondering whether this is an exercise in “seeing what you want to see,” there will be moments where that skepticism feels warranted.

That said, for readers interested in how literature can be reexamined through different cultural lenses, or how queerness can be traced even in spaces where it was historically unspoken, Queer Oz offers thoughtful—if sometimes speculative—analysis. Just be prepared for a level of interpretation that may feel more reflective of the critic than the creator.

[Bonsai · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75, rounded up. What an absolute SLOG. Usually I love reading criticism of classic children's literature. Ditto queer studies, so this seemed like a perfect mashup. Nope.

The writing itself is borderline indecipherable at times. Over and over I had to pause to mentally translate Scholarly English into Plain English — academic writing at its most irritating.

Sure, a book like this, published by a university press, is bound to include some specialized jargon...and that's all the more reason not to throw in unnecessary show-off words like adumbrate, cathexis, and contumely.

And the sentence structure — good lord. If a person with a degree in linguistics who reads 3-5 books a week and has taken a master's level course in children's lit can't make it from one end of a sentence to the other without doubling back in confusion, something's outta whack.

In short, this author took a subject I was genuinely interested in and excited to explore and turned it into an exercise in pure frustration. A bummer, because I was also intrigued by Pugh's books on Disney fairy tales and TV sitcoms. But after wrestling my way through Queer Oz, I'm not sure I want to repeat the experience.

Unsolicited advice to Tison Pugh: For the love of Pete, don't try to sound impressive at the expense of BASIC COMPREHENSION.

[Vincent · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wanted to like this, hated the big jargon heavy academic language

[Josh Saville · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough and well written. The academic style writing can be a but dense at times, but if you don't mind having your vocabulary skills tested it's worth it.