Unsex Me Here

by Aurora Mattia

“A fairy tale, in the classic, sparkling, and powerful ways." —Michelle Tea

If Aurora Mattia is a switchboard operator, then Unsex Me Here is her call log. Please hold. There’s someone on the other line. A spider, a sibyl, an angel, a mermaid, a goddess, or an ex-girlfriend.


Unsex Me Here is a prayer book tied together by the strings of a corset. Glamorous ramblers, haunted by the sense of another world drawing near, wander in and out of its inexplicable twilight. From a West Texas town with a supernatural past to a stalactite cavern in the birthplace of Aphrodite, from hotel rooms to gardens to the far horizon of a thought, they seek the source of the disturbance in their minds. Heartbreak is not so far from rapture; holy babble is another kind of gossip. Every pilgrimage is as dense with symbolism as it is refined by desire.

Genres: Queer, Short Stories, Poetry, Fiction, LGBT, Fantasy, Transgender

254 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2025

Reviews

[catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unsex Me Here is one of the most intimate books I have ever read. Psychedelic and glittering with raw, tender emotion, Mattia's prose possesses an unmatched lyricality, turning each story into an aria of desire, loss, and becoming. Though the stories follow unique plotlines, from the grandiosity of Greek mythos to the soft soliloquies of heartbroken women, they are entwined together in their motifs. From drops of opal, to the whinny of a mare, to the ripe sweetness of a peach, Unsex Me Here connects the stories of transfeminine individuals across all of time and space. Reading this book is like experiencing the rapture from every angle. I can't recommend it enough!

(Thank you Nightboat for the ARC! Review copied from my Edelweiss account.)

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unsex Me Here is phenomenal, in the sense that it's an experience unlike any I've encountered--it's strikingly beautiful, unapologetically tragic, and exists thoroughly for itself, not for any reader's catharsis. Aurora Mattia weaves figures and experiences from her own life into stories that blur and break the lines between fiction and creative nonfiction, fantasy and realism, mythology and prophecy. She bends genre as if it's clay beneath her hands, as if her typewriter molds opals and faceted diamonds. Each sentence is beautiful and revelatory, their content profoundly intimate. The collection ends with a printed interview with Mattia that further discusses her process and opinions on writing.

Read this collection if you want a book that will change you. It's an unmissable work of transfeminine literature, & Mattia is a writer of unparalleled skill.

I borrowed an ARC of Unsex Me Here from my best friend Catherine, whose review you should also read!

[Eline · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow ik moest hier echt even heel erg inkomen en de eerste 100 pagina's snapte ik er geen hol van maar dit was eigenlijk heel cool

ben er nog niet helemaal uit of dit nou een verhalenbundel is of toch iets samenhangenders of juist gefragmenteerders (laat wel weer zien hoe vreemd dit was) maar ik weet wel dat ik sommige delen leesbaarder vond dan andere (groot fan van celebrity skin)

er hing rond dit hele werk een hele interessante religieuze/mystieke vibe en ik denk dat je daar heel veel meer uit kan halen als je meer weet over mythologie en dat soort dan ik

de laatste 50 pagina's die bestonden uit interviews met de auteur waren een hoogtepunt!! daaruit werd wel een soort van iets duidelijker wat nou het hele idee was en de literaire inspiraties en het commentaar daarbij vond ik erg interessant om over te lezen
zelfs de acknowledgements waren bijzonder, al met al een boek als geen ander i guess

[Adrien · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had no idea what this book was going to be about, and I have no regrets after reading it. The entire book feels like a fever dream that I can barely remember, let alone describe. This is a great book to feel more connected to the LGBTQIA+ community. I don't know what else to say other than I have never felt more validated and connected to something in a while.

Quotes:

Valentine's Day
"He grasped a corner of fabric, pulling until the robe began to spill swiftly, silkily off its hook; then, with a flick of his wrist, whipped it toward the bed, where it fell and settled-in glossy folds and flat yellow lengths-on his chest. The room was offended at this sudden flash of extravagance" Page 8 (Raphael is such a little diva)

Via Crucis
"But god said nothing-so he decided god was silence. Which meant the devil was words, which meant he started praying to the devil instead. He figured god probably expelled the devil from heaven because he talked too much." Page 18

"We were surrounded by passing instants, so attuned to time that every second hurt" Page 27 (I relate to this on such a deep level I can't even describe it)

[Chanel Chapters]

May we all remember Milky 🐍

[Julia Langeway · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest queer/trans book (poetry) ever written, Aurora is simply unlike any other. The appendix interview highlighting her influences (gloria andeluz, manuel Puig) was so insightful after reading the insanely maximalist and disorienting stories- i mean in the best way possible!

[Ally Ang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could read this book 100 times, for 100 years, and still discover new layers of meaning. Astonishing.

[Judith Blanke]

Lovesick and perpetually traversing a homebound road, Aurora's writing felt familiar in its, dare I say, neuroses, and the effulgent gut-spilling of being a beautiful transexual crashing out over the entire spectrum of rejection in love and life and somehow also finding that we are being observed, chided, or held by forces, divine or demonic, far greater and far more imminent than we usually know.

[Emily]

dnf @ 25%, may just not have been in the right headspace for this at the moment, may retry later

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was my life before and after this book, and I wonder how much my past has been change retrospectively

[Bea Edmiston · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's still going

[Percy Hanawalt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aurora Mattia is a singular literary voice and a force of nature. I read her novel The Fifth Wound last year and thought it was tremendous, and this collection of short stories is similarly brilliant.

If you like straightforward, easy prose, linear time, and grounded reality, this will not be the book for you. If you appreciate being swirled along in a current of symbolism, myth, and beauty/pain, this book may be for you. Queerness, particularly the experiences of trans women, is a central thread, and a theme that isn’t dumbed down to play to a cisgender audience. This is, in many ways, a book that’s designed to challenge.

All of the stories are beautiful; my favorite, for personal reasons, was “Cradle Me, Lucifer.” My partner and I lost our beloved bearded dragon to a (seemingly) sudden case of sepsis, so the author’s grief at the loss of her ball python, Milky (and the lack of empathy of others when encountering love for a reptile) spoke to me. I also particularly loved “Celebrity Skin,” which imagines the life of one of the ancient transgender priestesses of Cybele.

A bold, provocative, and beautiful work, this collection feels like staring into an opal, or smelling a perfume that haunts you with its fragrance long after it’s passed.

[—lex♡]

Esto hace claramente parte del movimiento literario contemporáneo. El problema es, ¿quería pararme a entender? No, no quería. Las obras que son demasiado poéticas, que tienen demasiado simbolismo entre páginas, son mi peor terror. Sin hablar de que los significados pueden cambiar de un país a otro, siendo la autora China y residiendo en Estados Unidos, mientras yo soy latina. La idea se me hizo más terrible que placentera o si quiera interesante.

El único punto que pude entender fue el título del libro. Gracias, Shakespeare. Lo cual me parece interesante y siento que pega divinamente con lo que se encuentra entre las páginas de la obra.

Cualquiera que se adentre a este tipo de historia debe tener un bagaje intertextual bastante amplio si no quiere andar perdido todo el tiempo (o al menos la intención de investigar mucho). No sé si es por la diferencia cultural o de cualquier otro ámbito, pero no tenía las herramientas para enfrentarme a esto, así que realmente no lo disfruté. Se me hizo soporífero e incluso de mal gusto en algunas partes. Es lo que sucede cuando vas a medias.

Si es bueno o malo, al final del día, no lo sé.

La última historia, al menos, me gustó bastante.

[artie · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you don’t worship this book it wasn’t written for you etc

“Unsexing is what happens when I as a transsexual am understood not as basically a man or a woman, but as a particular affect in a particular instant—the affect does not refer back to a stabilized state of sex, but creates an instantaneous atmosphere. Which is to say, unsexing is a way of never arriving.” (204)

[Cris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giving Wilde, Wolfe, Sappho but contemporary lit fiction. high femme reflections on longing and intimacy but without the stifled gender suffocation of the cis prism. Why am I always dying for more queer subjectivity and imagination like this? There’s too little of this relatable content on love, mental health and longing even as it is much denser, feminine and adorned than my world.

[Ana Sandoval g · Rating 4 out of 5]

If it resonates in a particular way, then I assume you must be its audience. So real the emotions the author gives every short story is beautiful.

[Hannah Finkelstein · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some cheap garbage. Badly written. Surprised how it got 3 stars - don't waste your time.

[Chloe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pseudointellectual rubbish. Very poorly written and distasteful.

[Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intimate, kaleidoscopic, hallucinogenic, beautiful, terrifying

[Quinn]

This book is beautifully written but I don’t know if it was the spinal tap I just had but I COULD NOT get into it. Maybe I’ll try again one day.

[Catherine Moore · Rating 1 out of 5]

Every sentence was 75 words and included at least 3 SAT vocab words but said nothing. Under 300 pages and still entirely too long.

[Harper Dziedzic · Rating 5 out of 5]

if aurora mattia started a cult and explicitly said it was a cult i would still join

[cacio e petal · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐

WOW amazing.

id like to say more but honestly i never know what aurora is talking about but dang she writes so pretty 😍 my favorite piece was the cradle me, lucifer (the one about the snake) i also loved the passage about corpse flowers and peacocks from via crucis. thinking about getting peacocks and corpse flower tattoo.

Anywhere, but particularly in the desert, a peacock is a dense epicenter of decadence. For the sake of this decadence, the peacock has sacrificed the sky, has forgone the function of flight in order to obtain a different function, that of artifice: or more precisely, communication. I mean to say, a peacock's feathers are a form of speech-and to all who witness them, pure poetry. But the shriek bursts forth from their gilded throats at the pitch of pain, striking my skull with such sudden violence that I am silenced by terror and awe. In the beauty of their feathers, etc., do you understand?

So it also should come as no surprise that years after the end of this story, at a metropolitan botanical garden, having chanced upon one of those blossoms whose perfume is not sweet but putrid, whose temperature is equivalent to that of a human body, and who are known, to my delight, as corpse flowers, I fell in love. The function of their perfume is the same as that of any other flower, but the form inverts the logic of desire. The corpse flower asserts the allure of rot.

To contextualize my latter-day visit to the botanical garden, I should mention that by the time I saw the as-it-were Amorphophallus titanum, I had come to understand myself as something other than a man, and also as something other than a woman. I am what pseudo-scientific discourses once called a transsexual. I am what you (in the solitude of your skull) might call 'disfigured,' or what I, in homage to Lady Macbeth, might call 'unsexed.' My pussy is, in the matter of reproduction, useless; it is understood by pseudoscientific discourses to be merely an inverted penis (read: misshapen phallus) or the facsimile of a vagina (read: formless phallus).

But I understand my pussy to be a peacock feather, because it has forgone its prior function in order to obtain a different function, that of artifice: or more precisely, communication. I understand my pussy to be a corpse flower, because it asserts the allure of rot: You won't have any children with me, okay? But while the adaptations performed by the peacock and the corpse flower are considered natural, mine is considered artificial-because you have forgotten that we are not so far from birds and flowers. Remember with me.<\spoiler>

nr because it only has 14 ratings and i don't want my rating to mess up the average but i give it 3 stars out of 4 [:

[eel · Rating 5 out of 5]

i cherish the moment that i saw this at the library and decided to bring it home because each story, essay, and interview excerpt in this book is a multifaceted jewel that is beautifully original

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come for the cum, stay for the stalactites.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

“Unsexing is what happens when I as a transsexual am understood not as basically a man or a woman, but as a particular affect in a particular instant - the affect does not refer back to a stabilized state of sex, but creates an instantaneous atmosphere. Which is to say: unsexing is a way of never arriving.”

Mattia has created another work worth returning to in this hybrid of stories and interviews that pulse with intimacy, tragedy, and prophecy. Most importantly, becoming. This book is somehow neither alive nor ghost, it’s some hallucinogenic other that spins religion and myth into reality, with no answers or authority or arrival.

“Ezekiel in the Snow” is and is not a story about missing an ex-boyfriend, as Mattia upends autofiction and alters reality to get “a break from missing him myself.” “Via Crucis” is a fever dream written and rewritten over many years. Many pieces here are written and rewritten, gone back to, in ways that make you realize even holding a bound book in your hands isn’t any measure of finalization. “Cradle Me, Lucifer” is an easy reader favorite, a piece largely gifted from Mattia’s python, Milky.

“I think part of my transition has been an attempt to restore a paradise that never existed. A way of trying to create what should have but never happened, and of trying to save myself from what did happen…I was not writing a transition narrative, by which I mean I wasn’t trying to narrativize transition, or retrofit some perfected idea of my transition; I was trying to make a transition-language, trying to write a book that constantly shapeshifts and transforms itself; trying to represent, by means of a mythological language, a kind of feminine shapeshift and reaching for beauty, by which I mean a reaching for communion.”

There’s no other way to tell these atmospheres than through a psychedelic use of religion and symbols. Because there’s always the becoming of it all, the erasure of finiteness in being. Reading this, you can’t imagine a text operating around and outside gender being anything other than maximalist. Gender is suffocating AF, and grounding a book in gender basically admits false and unnecessary constraints, and to what end? Unsex Me Here loud and clear leads you to wonder, what on earth is the point of that?

Which I feel stupid even saying because that isn’t the point of the book at all. It mostly exists for itself and for the transfeminine universe, certainly not for anything adjacent to cis-framing or a gender binary (that’s boring to even think about, at this point). If there even is a further point to this work, it’s to show desire and loss and change in their most authentic states - (un)narrativized by symbols and never concluding or arriving.

I think it’s probably worth reading The Fifth Wound and this one together. ‘Complement’ isn’t the right word for how they speak alongside each other. Mattia describes Unsex Me Here as “a sequence of detours” to The Fifth Wound, which makes sense when looking at it's less narrativized, more hybrid and infinite structure. If there is any conversation between the two, it’s an ongoing one, as life and desire and transition are all eternally uncompleteable things.

[Anthony Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A miracle is when god cheats, because it makes the story better."

"There was an imbalance in my mental ledger. Reality had too little; fantasy, too much. A spiritual osmosis was required."

Over-written with an electronic thesaurus, but occasionally filled with some great insight that hurt and felt truthful.

"Meanwhile Valentine gave his cock a few final shakes, releasing one after another arpeggio of aural glitter, which Raphael’s inner mind—longing for a past that never was—processed romantically, extrapolating a Roman fountain, green summer shadows, and honeysuckle tumbling from a ruined arch."

There's an attempt here to mystify some of the most mundane moments a life could experience. Where the author related visions of divine effulsions emanating from her experiences, I found myself smelling the mold of her bathroom. As the piss she's excited to write about hits the toilet, I can only smell last night's crappy IPA filling the bowl leaving the room sour. We're a far cry from Anne Dillard or Thoreau with these ecstatic revelations.

"(A name is a door that someone else opens into us. ‘Faggot’ is a door opened too often by the wrong hands. But you were a faggot, my love, thank god. And when I say ‘faggot’ I am chewing rose petals and spitting them out in the shape of a word.)"

I felt sad for the author. If that was the author's intent, mission success, but so much of the violence and ugliness the author felt happened at the hands of her community.

[cyrus · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*. technically i didn't finish this, but i finished all of the stories themselves and just had parts of the interview left before i had to give this back to the library.

i'm conflicted! i think mattia's writing is so unique and lush, and it does such a good job of painting these unreal fairytale landscapes for her stories to take place in. i think that after a certain point, i was overwhelmed with all of the description and imagery; it slowed down my understanding of the story instead of giving me further insight. i do think that if i came back to this after some time, i'd be able to take more of it in. still fantastic and well worth reading.

standouts: valentine's day, via crucis, cradle me lucifer

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aside from loving the experience of this book, just a heads up for future poor ratings: there's currently a Zionist subreddit about this author, doxxing and trying to cancel her. One of their "strategies" is to just give her work a bunch of 1- and 2-star ratings, and say it's boring or poorly written or whatever. Another discussed strategy is to report her to the FBI. Just so we're all clear on the type of harm and violence people who are unhappy with a trans author calling out a genocide - and putting her money where her mouth is - are willing to attempt to inflict.

[Vivien]

DNF @ 32%

Im trying to read more poetry and different genres.

The florid prose isn’t something I’m used to. It has a dreamy, shimmery, and psychedelic quality, but it’s overwhelming and unrelenting. It feels like an oppressive dream and all I want is to wake up.