Trans Girl Suicide Museum
Back of the Book
one part ketamine spiral, one part confessional travelogue from the edge of gender, TGSM is a hallucinatory transmission on sex, identity, the internet, and the flickering wish not to exist in a given body at a given point in time. TGSM raises questions with which we have begun to negotiate broadly as a culture: what is actually happening to someone when they transition? how should we understand or describe such processes? what is the role of drugs, of hallucination, of imagination, in transition? is being a trans person in this moment in history--when the identity is ever more carefully traced [and tracked] by larger cultural forces--more liberated than before?
drawing its source material from chance encounters--wordless interactions in basements or bathrooms or hotel rooms--to archives of 20th century critical theory, sleepover secrets exchanged between old friends, rhetorical barbs deployed in the classrooms of elite universities, arguments on the phone with your parents across timezones, the nonverbal codes of high and low fashion, and scribbled notes on the backs of receipts for medicines you don't know how they work, TGSM is a morbid yet strangely hopeful meditation on the possibilities and meanings of gender variation in our time.
We Love It Because
Hannah Bearf’s vivid encounters and reflections are enchanting and expansive. The intimate autotheory provides a deep level of insight into trans experiences, unfolding into both an educational and validating text. With a thick air of liberation, the cultivation of personal critical theory expands empathy and care amongst the complex realities of people's lived experiences.
Memorable Passage
I lived in New York for a few years after college and then got kind of emotionally sick and had to leave. When I lived there I went on a rant once to Elizabeth about symbols. One day, fairly early on in our early romantic thing, we were in bed late at night and I was talking about not wanting to be a symbol to her. I knew from having other rich friends in New York who were invested in sub-culture and coolness that we would often describe people by describing them in symbolic categories, for example what their job was or where they went to college, rather than how they actually are in the world.
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