Trans Lit Books

“Then Rod comes up, his glasses glistening.
He doesn't remove them. He starts to sway.
Is he high? - "Hello. Are you all listening?
I'm glad so many of you are here today,
Because as of now you're part of a movement
that uses writing as a tool for the improvement
of the world! I know that of course it looks
like what we do is make great trans books,
and we do! You've all read Arizona?
And what did you think? Was it fucking great?
Were you like, 'It's a book, but I somehow relate'?
Turns out a novel about a tranny stoner
driving to Flagstaff can also be
a tool to build community!"

"People think that the power of books is surprising,
like 'it's just a book.' Well I've got news!
Books are vital. We need humanizing
depictions of ourselves, depictions we can use,
to feel okay, or make sense of our being.
Because if you're cis, you're used to seeing
people like you in books and on screen.
That's normal, that's how it's always been.
But we have to do the work of trying
to insert ourselves, and pretend we can see
meaning in characters we could never be,
and failing, and feeling like we're lying,
or else we conclude that books are lame
and go off to play a computer game.

"And simultaneously, we're learning
we have nothing to say, that people of our kind,
whatever emotions we might have churning
around in our bodies, don't have a mind:
we can't be authors, we needn't be respected,
at best we're specimens to be dissected!
Know yourself, the philosophers instruct,
unless you're trans, in which case, you're fucked.
We're known by others Our prescribed aspiration
is to change ourselves, the definition of despair!
Worse yet, we don't know what it is we share.
Because of our intellectual isolation
we're strangers to each other, a community without
any real culture to talk about.”
― Cat Fitzpatrick, The Call-Out