What do you think?
Rate this book
CO/NOTATIONS
CO/NOTATIONS, by Sarah Cavar, embodies a pair of trans(genre) lyric essays published in 2018 with The Offing and 2020 with the since-fallen 3:am Magazine, respectively.
___
“A critically hybrid text, Cavar’s CO/NOTATIONS explores what it means to ‘unwoman’ as an artistic craft, theoretical methodology, and ontological position. Through lyrical rumination and a braided deconstruction of gender, ‘unwomaning’ becomes the shedding of normative gender roles, the expansion of femininity beyond the biological category of ‘female,’ and an experimental reckoning into ‘transreality.’ How can we understand transness beyond medical, legal, and social categories? What are the radical potentialities of trans aesthetics, as we consider gender’s psychic and material affects on/in the body-mind? How can we engage in conversations about gender under a narrative of autonomy and transformative (un)belonging? The speaker asks, ‘What if I (still) don’t love my body and never did?’ Maybe coming into transreality is not the promise of belonging in/to one’s body, but the fierce and unrelenting longing to find happiness and love outside the cisgender realities that confine us.”
—MT Vallarta, Author of What You Refuse to Remember
“Cavar is a sharp wordsmith in the soft, ethereal realm of gender. These essays are enrapturing and witty—you can hear the genuine heartbeat in every one. Whether you’re someone who seeks words for your gender, someone who dances in its fluidity with no need to define it, or living anywhere in between: this text is a wealth of exploration.”
—Sofia Fey, Founder of the Luminaries Poetry Workshop and Poetry Editor at Hooligan Magazine
“In CO/NOTATIONS, Cavar offers up ‘frag/mince’ of an intimate reflection on transreality and trans existence. In a delicate yet powerful concert of poetic and didactic movements, Cavar machetes identity norms, constructions, and objectifications to reveal the limitless complexities and continuums of the human body. ‘The body begins as forest,’ Cavar writes. This work takes us on a journey through the en/trails, entangled limbs, and dense thicket of selves selving, selves salving, always evolving, always undone.”
—Kate Siklosi, Author of Selvage
“With nothing short of laser precision, Cavar exposes the ideological deficiencies of language, medicine, and gender that prevail in American culture and subsequently erase those who refuse conformity. Unflinchingly, this author calls attention to the tokenization of embodied trauma within creative writing; they refuse to “obfuscate [trauma] with beauty” choosing instead to show us pinched nipples, blobs of testosterone gel, and endless viscera. In a time of great confusion and peril, Cavar’s voice is a clear bell ringing out in defiance, calling all us deviants to come and bear witness.”
—Rita Mookerjee, Author of False Offering (JackLeg Press ‘23) and Co-Founder of Honey Literary
___
[sarah] Cavar is a PhD candidate and transMad writer-about-town. Their debut novel, Failure to Comply, is forthcoming with featherproof books (2024). Cavar is editor-in-chief of Stone of Madness press, and has had work published in CRAFT Literary, Split Lip Magazine, Electric Lit, and elsewhere. More @cavarsarah on twitter.
___
“A critically hybrid text, Cavar’s CO/NOTATIONS explores what it means to ‘unwoman’ as an artistic craft, theoretical methodology, and ontological position. Through lyrical rumination and a braided deconstruction of gender, ‘unwomaning’ becomes the shedding of normative gender roles, the expansion of femininity beyond the biological category of ‘female,’ and an experimental reckoning into ‘transreality.’ How can we understand transness beyond medical, legal, and social categories? What are the radical potentialities of trans aesthetics, as we consider gender’s psychic and material affects on/in the body-mind? How can we engage in conversations about gender under a narrative of autonomy and transformative (un)belonging? The speaker asks, ‘What if I (still) don’t love my body and never did?’ Maybe coming into transreality is not the promise of belonging in/to one’s body, but the fierce and unrelenting longing to find happiness and love outside the cisgender realities that confine us.”
—MT Vallarta, Author of What You Refuse to Remember
“Cavar is a sharp wordsmith in the soft, ethereal realm of gender. These essays are enrapturing and witty—you can hear the genuine heartbeat in every one. Whether you’re someone who seeks words for your gender, someone who dances in its fluidity with no need to define it, or living anywhere in between: this text is a wealth of exploration.”
—Sofia Fey, Founder of the Luminaries Poetry Workshop and Poetry Editor at Hooligan Magazine
“In CO/NOTATIONS, Cavar offers up ‘frag/mince’ of an intimate reflection on transreality and trans existence. In a delicate yet powerful concert of poetic and didactic movements, Cavar machetes identity norms, constructions, and objectifications to reveal the limitless complexities and continuums of the human body. ‘The body begins as forest,’ Cavar writes. This work takes us on a journey through the en/trails, entangled limbs, and dense thicket of selves selving, selves salving, always evolving, always undone.”
—Kate Siklosi, Author of Selvage
“With nothing short of laser precision, Cavar exposes the ideological deficiencies of language, medicine, and gender that prevail in American culture and subsequently erase those who refuse conformity. Unflinchingly, this author calls attention to the tokenization of embodied trauma within creative writing; they refuse to “obfuscate [trauma] with beauty” choosing instead to show us pinched nipples, blobs of testosterone gel, and endless viscera. In a time of great confusion and peril, Cavar’s voice is a clear bell ringing out in defiance, calling all us deviants to come and bear witness.”
—Rita Mookerjee, Author of False Offering (JackLeg Press ‘23) and Co-Founder of Honey Literary
___
[sarah] Cavar is a PhD candidate and transMad writer-about-town. Their debut novel, Failure to Comply, is forthcoming with featherproof books (2024). Cavar is editor-in-chief of Stone of Madness press, and has had work published in CRAFT Literary, Split Lip Magazine, Electric Lit, and elsewhere. More @cavarsarah on twitter.
47 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2023
25 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Cavar
20 books362 followersCavar [sarah] (they/them) is the author of FAILURE TO COMPLY (featherproof books, 2024) and DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS (Northwestern University Press, 2026).
Cavar holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and Science & Technology Studies at the University of California: Davis, and holds a B.A. in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College. They teach at the University of Maine: Augusta, and are interested in the politics of queercrip / transMad knowledge production.
Cavar holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and Science & Technology Studies at the University of California: Davis, and holds a B.A. in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College. They teach at the University of Maine: Augusta, and are interested in the politics of queercrip / transMad knowledge production.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 25, 2023
I wrote this!
July 5, 2023
A really lovely, experimental but highly lucid and easy to read collection of two essays related to the author's transness and lesbianism, and the difficulties/sensibilities/rewards of claiming lesbianism while rejecting womanhood and claiming transness, even transmasculinity, while rejecting manhood. My gender and sexuality are different from Cavar's, more parseable through a lens of trans gay manhood (although I'm bi, and do not always see myself as a man). But in many ways, these differences are precisely what I find most fascinating and illuminating in this type of trans text-- shared "kinds" of bodily dysphoria (eg dread of pregnancy and hatred of menstruation) can be interpreted by their bearers in all kinds of divergent ways, can stem from different kinds of fear and longing, can shake out into manhood and womanhood and butchness and nonbinariness and genders for which we have no names or maps yet. Cavar does an admirable job tying this kaleidoscope of possibility to feminist theory, and insisting that a feminist position must be one that allows full body autonomy and autonomy to determine one's own gender and sexual expression, regardless of one's birth assignment.
I'm not normally one to harp on an author's age, but I am very impressed that Cavar wrote these essays as a ~20 year old college undergraduate. They definitely don't read like most undergraduate writing, or most writing by people in their late teens and very early twenties, I've ever encountered.
I'm not normally one to harp on an author's age, but I am very impressed that Cavar wrote these essays as a ~20 year old college undergraduate. They definitely don't read like most undergraduate writing, or most writing by people in their late teens and very early twenties, I've ever encountered.
September 6, 2023
In a more progressive modern society, we hear so many narratives of gender theory. This renders those more personal stories of lived gender experience all the more nuanced and valuable. Cavar’s CO/NOTATIONS offers readers a vulnerable, authentic, and empowering journey through real stream of consciousness; lived dysphoria. This collection of brilliant essays destroys challenges, constructs, and assumptions while presenting poignant, relatable observations on the struggles of gender identity & womanhood; for both those who identify with it and those who feel far removed from it, often alienated by it.
Cavar explores feeling, kinesthetic and emotional, through time, transition, truth. CO/NOTATIONS is an emblem of self-awareness and triumph through autonomy and comfort rather than a derivative 'healing/forgiveness' narrative. A great read!
Cavar explores feeling, kinesthetic and emotional, through time, transition, truth. CO/NOTATIONS is an emblem of self-awareness and triumph through autonomy and comfort rather than a derivative 'healing/forgiveness' narrative. A great read!
July 11, 2023
CO/NOTATIONS makes so many excellent points about transmedicalist bullshit, bodily autonomy, and so many other things like the expectations literary circles have for deviant people.
Cavar’s refusal to simplify their identity was so important and awesome to me. Not every trans person has the same origin story. Cavar’s experiences not only prove that they also reveal how deep some parts of society’s obsession with gender and sex go. As well as how that harms us.
This is an important exploration of discussions about nonbinary existence, queerness, womanhood, and bodily autonomy. Cavar’s footnotes are essential for that because it shows the exploration is ongoing in a way.
While I was reading this chapbook, I kept sending quotes from it to a bunch of my queer friends. I’m a trans man, so although I do not know what it feels like to be nonbinary I’m always excited to listen to people who are. I’ve witnessed the struggles all of the nonbinary people in my life have gone through in our heavily gendered world. Especially how so many are treated as Diet Gendered ™, often transmasculine when that’s not what they are.
Cavar’s refusal to simplify their identity was so important and awesome to me. Not every trans person has the same origin story. Cavar’s experiences not only prove that they also reveal how deep some parts of society’s obsession with gender and sex go. As well as how that harms us.
This is an important exploration of discussions about nonbinary existence, queerness, womanhood, and bodily autonomy. Cavar’s footnotes are essential for that because it shows the exploration is ongoing in a way.
While I was reading this chapbook, I kept sending quotes from it to a bunch of my queer friends. I’m a trans man, so although I do not know what it feels like to be nonbinary I’m always excited to listen to people who are. I’ve witnessed the struggles all of the nonbinary people in my life have gone through in our heavily gendered world. Especially how so many are treated as Diet Gendered ™, often transmasculine when that’s not what they are.
July 15, 2023
On the interiority of certain feelings and their self-naming. Cavar's layered perspective on discomfort with their body and the autonomy of making decisions about it.
I'm intrigued by the idea "that 'gender dysphoria' is a medico-psychiatric racket, a means of transmuting acute suffering under conditions of biological essentialism into individual fault" and that consequently "the so-called disease of 'dysphoria' was only as good as the transmedical gates it got me past." The problem described here, as I understand it, is that we're given only qualified autonomy: Before endocrinologists and surgeons will change our bodies, they require us to blame ourselves for being incorrectly gender-essentialized and to petition them to reessentialize us. We have to show up apologetically: Sorry, I can't do the sexgender I've been given. If we don't phrase our change request that way, tied to the system's preexisting notions of sexgender (Cavar's word), the system pretends it doesn't understand what we're saying. We aren't allowed to seek nonuterus for reasons of whatever; the system lets us argue for nonuterus based on explanations of sexgender.
An unfolding of co/notations and reflections over several years, as the author's self-understanding on these topics has evolved and looped back and self-expressed.
I'm intrigued by the idea "that 'gender dysphoria' is a medico-psychiatric racket, a means of transmuting acute suffering under conditions of biological essentialism into individual fault" and that consequently "the so-called disease of 'dysphoria' was only as good as the transmedical gates it got me past." The problem described here, as I understand it, is that we're given only qualified autonomy: Before endocrinologists and surgeons will change our bodies, they require us to blame ourselves for being incorrectly gender-essentialized and to petition them to reessentialize us. We have to show up apologetically: Sorry, I can't do the sexgender I've been given. If we don't phrase our change request that way, tied to the system's preexisting notions of sexgender (Cavar's word), the system pretends it doesn't understand what we're saying. We aren't allowed to seek nonuterus for reasons of whatever; the system lets us argue for nonuterus based on explanations of sexgender.
An unfolding of co/notations and reflections over several years, as the author's self-understanding on these topics has evolved and looped back and self-expressed.
June 29, 2023
Filled with fresh perspective and inventive thought, Co/Notations is quotable, emotional, philosophical, ironic, humorous, and cutting at once. Cavar has a sharp, must-read, original voice on gender that is sure to resonate.
June 18, 2023
A remarkable, very queer book everyone should read!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews