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Incomplete Short Stories and Essays
This book is a collection of short story writing and critical essays that explore a range of themes, including experiences of being a trans woman of color, navigating oppressive structures, and the questions of what is trans literature and how we should talk about one another's work.
The short story portion of the book includes over eighty entries written in a variety of styles and genres: realist, sci-fi, horror, autobiography, drama, magical realism, etc.
The essay portion of the book features in depth writing on books by trans authors: Redefining Realness by Janet Mock, The Collection by Topside Press, Yemaya's Daughters by Dane Figueroa Edidi, He Mele A Hilo by Ryka Aoki, Este suelo secreto by Esdras Parra, and, finally, brief notes toward the anthology of fiction by trans women of color that I'm currently co-editing.
The short story portion of the book includes over eighty entries written in a variety of styles and genres: realist, sci-fi, horror, autobiography, drama, magical realism, etc.
The essay portion of the book features in depth writing on books by trans authors: Redefining Realness by Janet Mock, The Collection by Topside Press, Yemaya's Daughters by Dane Figueroa Edidi, He Mele A Hilo by Ryka Aoki, Este suelo secreto by Esdras Parra, and, finally, brief notes toward the anthology of fiction by trans women of color that I'm currently co-editing.
198 pages, ebook
Published January 1, 2015
1 person is currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Jamie Berrout
24 books74 followersJamie Berrout is an editor and the author of books of poetry, essays, and fiction. She grew up on the South Texas border.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 18, 2015
From the introduction: "This is a graveyard for trans stories that will never exist, the reader should not look at the numbered stories and rationalize them as closed narratives or micro fiction or prose poetry."
Jamie Berrout's incomplete short stories explicitly speak to the haunting lack of published fiction by trans women of colour, and what it would mean if all these stories could be finished. The stories themselves range from a few sentences to a few pages, often telling some truth about trans lesbian love, or white supremacist transmisogyny.
The topics vary from personal reflections, to alien body snatching, to pesticide exposure in an agricultural border town changing kids hormones levels, while parents organize against the exploitative pesticide company. Everyday life mixes with the magical and horrible. Many of these tiny stories make my body shake. But the stories aren't really there to be enjoyed, they're there for their silences and non-endings to speak louder than the stories themselves. I've never read anything based around that idea before and it's unsettling and powerful.
In the essay section of the book, she talks about the whiteness/racism of the self proclaimed trans lit movement, and engages with written work by trans women of colour, knowing that few other people have or will.
The overwhelming feeling is loss and absence. As a collection, it has infinitely more ideas in than anything the white trans writers at Topside have put out, and makes you wonder what the value of finished, meticulously edited fiction is anyway. Who is completion for and who does it serve?
Jamie Berrout's incomplete short stories explicitly speak to the haunting lack of published fiction by trans women of colour, and what it would mean if all these stories could be finished. The stories themselves range from a few sentences to a few pages, often telling some truth about trans lesbian love, or white supremacist transmisogyny.
The topics vary from personal reflections, to alien body snatching, to pesticide exposure in an agricultural border town changing kids hormones levels, while parents organize against the exploitative pesticide company. Everyday life mixes with the magical and horrible. Many of these tiny stories make my body shake. But the stories aren't really there to be enjoyed, they're there for their silences and non-endings to speak louder than the stories themselves. I've never read anything based around that idea before and it's unsettling and powerful.
In the essay section of the book, she talks about the whiteness/racism of the self proclaimed trans lit movement, and engages with written work by trans women of colour, knowing that few other people have or will.
The overwhelming feeling is loss and absence. As a collection, it has infinitely more ideas in than anything the white trans writers at Topside have put out, and makes you wonder what the value of finished, meticulously edited fiction is anyway. Who is completion for and who does it serve?
November 20, 2017
“A story about a trans girl who doesn’t know any other trans girls The doubt and the unshakeable feeling of emptiness this provokes.”
(12)
*
“The way we use stories to explain things we couldn’t otherwise. The way we use stories to make sense of the experiences that add up to each of our realities. How the logic of stories (whether driven by fantasy, natural cycles, concerns for justice, ideals of beauty, symmetry, chaos, or some idea of progress) forms an alternative or even a replacement for the broken, incoherent logic with which our lives proceed. The way we use stories to search for ourselves and to transform ourselves and to become ourselves.”
(20)
*
“What about my ordinary life as a horror story? The loss of much of my family to transness as a kind of haunting — they still call me from the beyond where they live, where I cannot go. The experience of leaving the house as a dystopian nightmare where any kind of violence could be visited upon me without consequence. The sense of being broken and monstrous when strangers recoil or say cruel things after hearing my voice or looking at me, but they are the ones with blood on their hands.”
(58)
*
“With poetry, in general, it’s hard to say much about what any specific poem is about — it’s up to the reader to be open to and todraw out the various meanings, thoughts, emotions, images, and sensations that might be found in the poem. If one reader experiences these poems completely differently from the ways I did or another reader did, that’s perfectly good. A poem isn’t a static object. It doesn’t have meaning by itself. I’m not sure a poem even exists if it isn’t being read or heard.”
(from “On Este Suelo Secreto and Esdras Parra”)
*
nothing I could say about this book will be as effective a review as letting it speak for itself (or, as the case may be, pointedly fail to speak, be prevented from speaking, be unable to speak).
*
“Do you know me yet? All of these stories are about me. Or maybe everything I know is in these stories. Either way.”
(38)
(12)
*
“The way we use stories to explain things we couldn’t otherwise. The way we use stories to make sense of the experiences that add up to each of our realities. How the logic of stories (whether driven by fantasy, natural cycles, concerns for justice, ideals of beauty, symmetry, chaos, or some idea of progress) forms an alternative or even a replacement for the broken, incoherent logic with which our lives proceed. The way we use stories to search for ourselves and to transform ourselves and to become ourselves.”
(20)
*
“What about my ordinary life as a horror story? The loss of much of my family to transness as a kind of haunting — they still call me from the beyond where they live, where I cannot go. The experience of leaving the house as a dystopian nightmare where any kind of violence could be visited upon me without consequence. The sense of being broken and monstrous when strangers recoil or say cruel things after hearing my voice or looking at me, but they are the ones with blood on their hands.”
(58)
*
“With poetry, in general, it’s hard to say much about what any specific poem is about — it’s up to the reader to be open to and todraw out the various meanings, thoughts, emotions, images, and sensations that might be found in the poem. If one reader experiences these poems completely differently from the ways I did or another reader did, that’s perfectly good. A poem isn’t a static object. It doesn’t have meaning by itself. I’m not sure a poem even exists if it isn’t being read or heard.”
(from “On Este Suelo Secreto and Esdras Parra”)
*
nothing I could say about this book will be as effective a review as letting it speak for itself (or, as the case may be, pointedly fail to speak, be prevented from speaking, be unable to speak).
*
“Do you know me yet? All of these stories are about me. Or maybe everything I know is in these stories. Either way.”
(38)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews