Psychopomps

by Alex DiFrancesco

In 2010, Alex DiFrancesco had a different name and was a missing person. Alone in a mental hospital, they began to have fantasies of running away permanently, changing their name, growing a beard. In their journey to coming out as transgender, DiFrancesco moved from New York City to the Midwest. Psychopomps follows them on the search for family, marriage, relationships with other trans people, attempts to build community, and for the elusive link to ancient beliefs about the special spiritual role of the trans individual in society.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, Queer, LGBT, Transgender, Adult

149 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2019

About the author

ALEX DIFRANCESCO is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, Tin House, Brevity, and more. They are a 2017 winner of Sundress Academy for the Arts' OutSpoken Competition, and were a finalist in Cosmonauts Avenue’s Inaugural Nonfiction Prize. They have recently moved to Ohio, where they are still trying to wrap their head around “Sweetest Day.”

Reviews

[I. Merey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is going to sound very weird, but here we go: while reading this, I repeatedly wanted to be one of those big fish that opens its mouth and lets its young swim into the safe cavern of the inside of their mouth to protect them from all that is terrible in the world. Sometimes, I put the book (on my phone) to the side and just STARED.

I read this in two big separate gulps and it gave me that rare and electric feeling I get when I read Sarah Shulman's creative-non-fiction novels (People in Trouble; Rat Bohemia), or THE Stone Butch Blues. When I finished BLUES, I remember desperately wanting to reach out and connect with the person who had written that book, because they talked about being in this world in a way that made sense to me like few others had before. I remember being very sad when I learned that Feinberg was gone--DiFrancesco is out there though; writing and creating and living and breathing and they speak so eloquently on so many topics: this is a book that is of course very recognizably trans and queer but for anyone whose had lovers, friends, situations, dreams, crushed dreams, rubble pressed back into the shape of a dream, been a hurter, a hurtee, has looked for a truth, has lost it and then found it again.

PSYCHOPOMPS weaves between the past and present, the big city that doesn't need us and the little townbox we're escaping; it speaks about spirituality, activism, mental illness, creativity, and being in touch with the great Art Spirit Leonard Cohen. The writing is crisp and sparkling--evoking to me Feinsberg's sincerity and Shulman's heart-breaking clarity.

If you're trans, if you're cis, this book is essential reading.

I wanted to buy a print copy of this book to have forever, but it seems out of print. :/ BUT the author has a free PDF copy available on their website and it is here to check out: https://alexdifrancesco.com/psychopomps/

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Psychopomps, Alex swings wide the doors, letting the reader crawl deep down inside, sharing with us their confusion, frustrations, losses, and ultimate relief as they move along their journey to self discovery.

An impressively powerful collection of essays on gender exploration and identity, finding and losing and rediscovering religion, and the always problematic quest for love and understanding as one is still learning to love and understand themselves. And it's courageous as all fuck if you ask me. Shedding your skin like that in front of everyone? What a big hot beautiful mess!

(one of my Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2019: https://bit.ly/2SHKV5L)

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tried reading an essay once a day so I could sort of digest everything that Alex was saying, but their writing is incredibly hard-hitting, every sentence a gut punch in its execution that I had to keep reading, to peer more into the world that they were opening up for me, to learn. Alex's writing is revelatory, powerfully heartbreaking, and important. This book should be spread to every corner, if possible.

[Emily Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

My heart hurts. This book was written in 2019 and in 2024 the themes and the heartache hit just as hard. I loved the depictions of queer joy, and I ached for the atrocities. Such an important read.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in a sitting, it's very engrossing because of the familiar and personal tone its written in, it's a vulnerable and intent account of people and places, communities and life of a trans writer, their love of baking and cooking, their work and job experiences, and discrimination from family and employers, the political world of 2016, all while falling in and out of love and an accounting of Catholicism and its influences. It's meandering, but in a way that life and consciousness are, time passes, people and things change, life goes on. It's not making any conclusions, just observing, weaving, and sharing in an open-hearted way.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Psychopomps by Alex DiFrancesco is a deeply personal and profound collection of essays. DiFrancesco writes thoughtfully about being trans, their family, found community, spirituality, and mental illness. I’m struck especially by the deftness with which they explore their feelings of disappointment in the state of the world, threaded with persistent (even when small) hope for a better future. I also loved the way they often observe and illuminate these kinds of real life symbolism, like the way trans people will gift each other the clothing they wore before they were able to present as their true selves, making “the people our friends once were a major part of the people we are becoming.” Also, this is the first book I’ve read where someone talks casually about real polyamorous relationships, and it was really exciting to me to see DiFrancesco normalize this practice so effortlessly. ⁣
⁣
I’m sure each essay stands alone beautifully, but they fit together cohesively in a way essay collections sometimes do not. I would definitely recommend reading this collection straight through as printed; DiFrancesco writes often about their relationships, and familiarity with the people in their life gained from preceding essays enriches the experience as you progress. Highly recommend this moving collection of essays which will sit alongside your soul and nourish you with all the food for thought.

[Bill Soldan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Psychopomps is a powerful, unflinching collection that cuts with an arsenal of emotional blades. DiFrancesco is that rare writer that navigates between tones so gracefully that they can make you laugh while breaking your heart. The sharp prose and deft manner with which they move through time and space, guiding us, teaching us but holding us accountable for what we learn, makes these essays both artfully rendered and compulsively readable.

It takes a lot for a book to make me cry, but DiFrancesco did it seemingly without effort. By the end, I was gutted. I was angry and sad. But I was also inspired. By our all-too-humanness. Our resolve. Our capacity for love, even when it’s unrequited.

This book is a beautiful gift by an amazing writer, and we’re damn lucky to have them.

[Jenny Jaybles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right after I finished reading the last sentence of this book I ordered Alex's other books All City and Transmutation. I could use a bunch of vocabulary like impactful and powerful and stuff but basically the act of how I immediately needed to read more of this authors work and needed to put those books in my shopping cart and complete that purchase asap says how I feel about the book.

[Frank Karioris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written to the extreme, the book is hard to take. For all the pain, all the issues; all the complications and complexities that are announcements that simple answers or accusations or resolutions are not how most life works.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An arresting meditation on identity, community, and loss, this book explores the pains and pleasures of the author's transmasc existence and the heartache of being human in a broken world. The voice, intimate yet restrained, is like a whispered secret. One of the best memoirs I've read.

[Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved, loved, loved this book. It truly embodies the Leonard Cohen quote: "There's a crack in everything / that's how the light gets in." Some of the essays are heartbreaking and painful, but there is also so much joy here, especially the joy of queer/trans community and discovering who you are.

[Baileigh Limestahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and I love Alex’s writing. They write in a way that is jarring and simple but so effective and so filled with feeling and emotion. They do not give too much, but just enough for you to understand.

[Finn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A profoundly personal dive into the cumulative and overlapping ways our lives take shape amongst those around us. Chaotic and considered, Pyschopomps is unflinchingly direct and all the more human for it.

[Serj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very honest look into the queer and trans families we build. It’s messy and sad and beautiful and it all makes me want to cry. After I finished it I kept saying to myself “for Bobby, with love”

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essays and memoir. Searing, challenging, thought-provoking, many notations made for things to return to, and be inspired by.

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

DiFrancesco came to Pittsburgh for a reading [which I'm remembering as being at The White Whale] and impressed me enough to have me standing in line to get a signed copy. The book itself did not disappoint.

I would call the piece Confessional Memoir, and I admire its unflinching -- yet empathetic -- view of a hard life on the margins. It's a literary life, some of it among the boho tribes of NYC, which I've known about (the NYC boho literary realm) my whole life. It's a trans life, punctuated by nervous breakdowns and institutionalizations, which is a story I've witnessed in my own circle. I will say that this struck me as very honest, and very real. Oh, yes, heartbreaking.

Favorite lines:

--It's also a fact that sadness restarted Sinatra's career, which was then failing as the playboy aged out of his teenybopper fanbase. Sadness sells. There are a lot of mourners. [in re "In the Wee Small Hours" album, inaccurately called "In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning" on page 34]

--I kept trying to work the sacred mythologies from the far past, from trans history, into my stories, somehow. I kept failing. There was always a missing link, something damaged and broken irreparably, that I couldn't ever express. We had been one thing, once. We were now something quite other than that.

Recommended.

[Akiva ꙮ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Am I a sucker for trans memoir? Oh hell yes. But most of them aren't this good.