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I Don't Want To Be Understood
A transsexual woman pieces together fragmented details of a repressive religious childhood and an unsupportive family, drawing from autobiographical experiences of the poet’s life.
I Don’t Want To Be Understood is a work of resistance against the conventional trans narrative, and a resistance against the idea that trans people should have to make themselves clear and understandable to others in other to deserve human rights. This is a compelling, urgent collection about the body and survival that asks how we learn to love in a culture where normal is defined by exclusion and discrimination.
These poems stretch from childhood to the present day—resisting typical narratives of self-discovery, resilience, and personal growth—and instead asks what it means to be granted or denied personhood by the world around you. It is a personal archive of a trans life laid out in all its messiness and unknowability, and is a book for anyone who has questioned why we place so many limitations on who gets to be considered a human being. These poems do not celebrate survival, but rather ask why transsexuals and other gender non-conforming people must fight so hard to survive in the first place.
I Don’t Want To Be Understood is a work of resistance against the conventional trans narrative, and a resistance against the idea that trans people should have to make themselves clear and understandable to others in other to deserve human rights. This is a compelling, urgent collection about the body and survival that asks how we learn to love in a culture where normal is defined by exclusion and discrimination.
These poems stretch from childhood to the present day—resisting typical narratives of self-discovery, resilience, and personal growth—and instead asks what it means to be granted or denied personhood by the world around you. It is a personal archive of a trans life laid out in all its messiness and unknowability, and is a book for anyone who has questioned why we place so many limitations on who gets to be considered a human being. These poems do not celebrate survival, but rather ask why transsexuals and other gender non-conforming people must fight so hard to survive in the first place.
100 pages, Paperback
First published August 6, 2024
7 people are currently reading
323 people want to read
About the author
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
12 books277 followersJoshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in California. Her work has been published in Denver Quarterly, The American Poetry Review, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. She is the author of two poetry collections: i’m alive / it hurts / i love it (boost house 2014), and THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (CCM 2016).
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 7, 2024
An incredible poetry collection that touches on growing up trans, family rejection, religious trauma, and surviving despite it all 🏳️⚧️💗🏳️🌈
Thank you to Alice James Books for my ARC. Out now!
Thank you to Alice James Books for my ARC. Out now!
April 2, 2024
really accessible, hard hitting poetry that is both strange and accessible, welcoming and alienating. really gorgeous work.
“she was born a roll of paper / towels. The more pieces of her body / you’d tear off, the more of her there would be.”
content warnings for violent imagery + depictions of transphobia
“she was born a roll of paper / towels. The more pieces of her body / you’d tear off, the more of her there would be.”
content warnings for violent imagery + depictions of transphobia
April 14, 2024
In I DON'T WANT TO BE UNDERSTOOD, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza offers an unapologetic view into her experience as a transgender woman. Espinoza's writing emulates a perfect balance between beauty and strength, which lends itself perfectly to telling her story of self acceptance and survival.
Thanks to Consortium and Alice James Books for the ARC !!
Thanks to Consortium and Alice James Books for the ARC !!
April 28, 2025
so mad i missed her and Melissa Broder link up for a reading outside of iHOP
December 4, 2024
So good I transitioned twice
April 3, 2024
Time-Lapse Video of Trans Woman Collapsing Inward Like a Dying Star
I beg for invisible fire.
Every night I pray to love,
please invent yourself.
I imagine a place after this place
and I laugh quietly to no one
as the hair on my chin
weeds through old makeup.
When I go to sleep
I am vinegar inside clouded glass.
The world comes to an end
when I wake up and wonder
who will be next to me.
Police sirens and coyote howls
blend together in morning’s net.
Once, I walked out past the cars
and stood on a natural rock formation
that seemed placed there to be stood on.
I felt something like kinship.
It was the first time.
Once, I believed god
was a blanket of energy
stretched out around
our most vulnerable
places,
when really,
she’s the sound
of a promise
breaking
I beg for invisible fire.
Every night I pray to love,
please invent yourself.
I imagine a place after this place
and I laugh quietly to no one
as the hair on my chin
weeds through old makeup.
When I go to sleep
I am vinegar inside clouded glass.
The world comes to an end
when I wake up and wonder
who will be next to me.
Police sirens and coyote howls
blend together in morning’s net.
Once, I walked out past the cars
and stood on a natural rock formation
that seemed placed there to be stood on.
I felt something like kinship.
It was the first time.
Once, I believed god
was a blanket of energy
stretched out around
our most vulnerable
places,
when really,
she’s the sound
of a promise
breaking
February 17, 2025
I DON’T WANT TO BE UNDERSTOOD, the latest poetry collection from acclaimed author Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, centers her experiences as a trans woman from childhood forward. The poems are deeply reflective and honest, direct without being heavy, vulnerable without compromising strength. Espinoza has a marked talent for accessible lyricism; her poems draw readers in like quiet confessions at times, vociferous protests at others. The result is a collection that resonates immediately, but also echoes for hours after setting it down.
This is a powerful and immensely readable collection, as well as a vital and massively underrepresented perspective in American poetry. Joshua Jenniefr Espinoza continues to prove why many regard her as one of the most talented poets of our time.
This is a powerful and immensely readable collection, as well as a vital and massively underrepresented perspective in American poetry. Joshua Jenniefr Espinoza continues to prove why many regard her as one of the most talented poets of our time.
April 3, 2025
4.5/5 (rounded up to 5)
CW: transphobia, religious bigotry, child abuse
I Don't Want To Be Understood is an insightful and poignant poetry collection that talks about the author's experience as a trans woman and how glimpses from her upbringing has shaped who she is. I felt that the verse Espinoza uses was easy-to-read as you understand Espinoza's experience with family that doesn't support her identity and that you really get to feel the emotions that Espinoza was feeling at the time when you read her poems. While some of the structure and formatting threw me off a bit (part of it might because I was reading this on an e-reader), I really enjoyed this poetry collection
CW: transphobia, religious bigotry, child abuse
I Don't Want To Be Understood is an insightful and poignant poetry collection that talks about the author's experience as a trans woman and how glimpses from her upbringing has shaped who she is. I felt that the verse Espinoza uses was easy-to-read as you understand Espinoza's experience with family that doesn't support her identity and that you really get to feel the emotions that Espinoza was feeling at the time when you read her poems. While some of the structure and formatting threw me off a bit (part of it might because I was reading this on an e-reader), I really enjoyed this poetry collection
March 20, 2024
ARC given by Edelweiss+ for Honest Review
A tender and powerful look at womanhood through Espinoza's experiences as a trans woman. The metaphor of death is used throughout as a way to show the "old self" and is a very relatable experience. I enjoyed their call backs to earlier poems throughout making it a cohesive and well put together collection.
My favorite poems are: "Airport Ritual", "Every Morning I Walk Through A Field", "Coercion Road", and "How I Make A Poem."
A tender and powerful look at womanhood through Espinoza's experiences as a trans woman. The metaphor of death is used throughout as a way to show the "old self" and is a very relatable experience. I enjoyed their call backs to earlier poems throughout making it a cohesive and well put together collection.
My favorite poems are: "Airport Ritual", "Every Morning I Walk Through A Field", "Coercion Road", and "How I Make A Poem."
March 29, 2025
I got to meet Jen today and for some reason didn’t say anything I wanted to say to her. Maybe because the writer and her work are different things and the things she writes about are so personal to me, it felt weird to talk about them to someone I just met.
Anyway, so much resonates. It doesn’t matter if I’m understood!
“It helps to have a name even though a name is a room you can never leave.” Been twirling this one in my mind a lot.
Thank you Jen! 💕
Anyway, so much resonates. It doesn’t matter if I’m understood!
“It helps to have a name even though a name is a room you can never leave.” Been twirling this one in my mind a lot.
Thank you Jen! 💕
October 1, 2024
ahhh lovely <3 very gratifying to see how espinozas work has changed since there should be flowers - which i preferred but likely because of the context i read it. the first and last poems made a beautiful pair. my favorite lines were "notice the softness of my neck / i have been waiting for someone's teeth / to explain to me what i am" 🔥
i definitely want to read this again soon!
i definitely want to read this again soon!
February 5, 2025
“You’ve gone and pulled yourself up into a world that doesn’t even want you”
Heart-wrenching and explosive poetry about gender and being a trans woman in today’s society. Just wow
(Read physical printed book.)
Heart-wrenching and explosive poetry about gender and being a trans woman in today’s society. Just wow
(Read physical printed book.)
November 14, 2024
Tremendously powerful, with teeth and a bleeding determined heart.
November 18, 2024
Wrenching and beautiful poems about what one gains, and loses, in the fight to become authentically whole. Sensitive and sometimes scorching chronicle of transition.
April 10, 2025
Really hard hitting poetry about what its like being trans and the pain that comes with it.
August 22, 2025
Some trans guy who fought for the right to kill people on behalf of an empire that hates him is chosen to operate the drone.
[...]
the woman at the center of the plasma or whatever-the-fuck-it-is
just wants someone to say one thing to her
that doesn't feel like kite string wrapped around an open wound
in a warm, strong wind. But it doesn't happen.
- "Airport Ritual"
---
One is always emerging
into something.
Out of something else.
[...]
You'd go to sleep and dream
of being a woman.
Eventually you never
regained consciousness.
This wasn't a decision.
It's just what happens
when you realize
how far away the stars are.
How old the universe is.
How a life is an open thing
leaking out into
the air around it.
- "Every Day"
---
It helps to have a name even though
a name is a room you can never leave.
- "Makeup Ritual"
---
voiceless fists swinging at invisible walls
housing the truth of a manhood
composed by exclusion, a saddening love,
emptied and unfeeling,
drawn helplessly to its roots, wondering
what in this future can be spared.
- "As He Killed Me I Imagined Him"
---
You said there were answers in prayer
and you were right.
When I inhale I am praying.
When I get dressed I am praying.
When I climb the mountain and let the wind
fuck me up I am praying.
When I call myself a woman I am praying.
When I cut loose every inch of hell
that was woven through my body I am praying.
- "Coming Out"
---
I was the miracle snow that came once a decade and blessed every surface
with the briefest, thinnest layer of itself before disappearing.
- "To My Parents"
---
I can sell my labor
Or die.
I can call myself a woman
Or finally find the right words.
I can make magic
And continue to stumble over feeding myself.
I can build a new life from nothing
And still end up with nothing.
- "My Freedom"
---
time is a body full of damage
that is constantly trying to forget, though it always
remembers on the long drive home. the freeway is
such a beautiful trigger. machines like cold fruit
falling from city to city until one day they find
the soil.
- "Gangrenous Love"
---
Motherless, I am dead but make my final breath a forever song dream for any soul on the verge of green-speckled hell who wants to hold my lonely voice for however long it will allow your grasp.
- "Poem"
---
It was normal to forgive.
It was normal to not forgive
myself. It was normal
to pray for thrombosis.
- "Normal"
---
Rhetoric I steal from men who hurt me.
Wisdom I take from a God I ghosted.
I feeling through thread.
I forge name and social.
I spit into goldshine.
I dream water and drink
roomfuls of flowers
roomfuls of flowers
roomfuls of flowers
roomfuls of flowers.
- "How I Make a Poem"
---
the way
every
movement
of
yours
feels
like an
act of war
against this
earth.
- "Your Weakness"
---
I
am going wild with crush
on my throat's
hard-won nature.
- "The Present"
[...]
the woman at the center of the plasma or whatever-the-fuck-it-is
just wants someone to say one thing to her
that doesn't feel like kite string wrapped around an open wound
in a warm, strong wind. But it doesn't happen.
- "Airport Ritual"
---
One is always emerging
into something.
Out of something else.
[...]
You'd go to sleep and dream
of being a woman.
Eventually you never
regained consciousness.
This wasn't a decision.
It's just what happens
when you realize
how far away the stars are.
How old the universe is.
How a life is an open thing
leaking out into
the air around it.
- "Every Day"
---
It helps to have a name even though
a name is a room you can never leave.
- "Makeup Ritual"
---
voiceless fists swinging at invisible walls
housing the truth of a manhood
composed by exclusion, a saddening love,
emptied and unfeeling,
drawn helplessly to its roots, wondering
what in this future can be spared.
- "As He Killed Me I Imagined Him"
---
You said there were answers in prayer
and you were right.
When I inhale I am praying.
When I get dressed I am praying.
When I climb the mountain and let the wind
fuck me up I am praying.
When I call myself a woman I am praying.
When I cut loose every inch of hell
that was woven through my body I am praying.
- "Coming Out"
---
I was the miracle snow that came once a decade and blessed every surface
with the briefest, thinnest layer of itself before disappearing.
- "To My Parents"
---
I can sell my labor
Or die.
I can call myself a woman
Or finally find the right words.
I can make magic
And continue to stumble over feeding myself.
I can build a new life from nothing
And still end up with nothing.
- "My Freedom"
---
time is a body full of damage
that is constantly trying to forget, though it always
remembers on the long drive home. the freeway is
such a beautiful trigger. machines like cold fruit
falling from city to city until one day they find
the soil.
- "Gangrenous Love"
---
Motherless, I am dead but make my final breath a forever song dream for any soul on the verge of green-speckled hell who wants to hold my lonely voice for however long it will allow your grasp.
- "Poem"
---
It was normal to forgive.
It was normal to not forgive
myself. It was normal
to pray for thrombosis.
- "Normal"
---
Rhetoric I steal from men who hurt me.
Wisdom I take from a God I ghosted.
I feeling through thread.
I forge name and social.
I spit into goldshine.
I dream water and drink
roomfuls of flowers
roomfuls of flowers
roomfuls of flowers
roomfuls of flowers.
- "How I Make a Poem"
---
the way
every
movement
of
yours
feels
like an
act of war
against this
earth.
- "Your Weakness"
---
I
am going wild with crush
on my throat's
hard-won nature.
- "The Present"
December 3, 2024
from "Questions for Your Admirer": "Ask the palm tree on the corner what she thinks of my predicament / What she'd do in my soft-heavy boots"
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews