There are not many holidays that queer artists can meet and celebrate the year’s accomplishments together, and one of those is fast approaching. On May 26th, the Lambda Literary Foundation will host the organizations 23rd annual awards event. I yawn at the Oscars, and sleep through the Super Bowl, but when it comes to recognizing queer writers, I get all tingly inside.
Despite the dark cloud that I mentioned in my previous Lambda-related article, the new trans fiction/non-fiction category split are a very big step forward for trans writers. The book business is transforming quickly, and the bloated marketplace can make it difficult for small publishers and new authors to find readers. A Lambda finalist or award winner gets an important edge and the opportunity to get their work in front of new eyes.
The consequences are immediate. One book that I wouldn’t have ever found out about if it weren’t for it being selected this year as a Lambda finalist in the “transgender fiction” category is Zoe Whittall’s second novel Holding Still for As Long As Possible. What a find! It was the first novel I’ve ever read that actually had anything to do with my real life.
Holding Still follows the interweaving stories of three protagonists, two hip, queer women in Toronto and Josh, the transman EMS worker with whom they both want to sleep. As Josh and his girlfriend Amy decide to end their relationship, he starts dating Billy, who is the roommate of their friend Roxy, and things in the small circle of friends get awkward. Sound familiar? Yeah, me too.
I don’t want to venture too far into the story, for fear of spoiling the very dramatic ending, but I’ll leave you with this piece of advice: if you ever find yourself dating a character in a novel and that guy is an EMT, be very careful, shit will hit the fan in Act 3. It’s not personal, it’s just how the world works (in books).
That said, the thing that makes this novel markedly different than almost every other novel ever written in the history of the novel, is that it is written from an insider’s perspective about young trans and queer people. It author makes the assumption that the reader knows what top surgery is, not just the medical reality, but that important it is to Josh, our FTM protagonist, and how significant it is that he meets his girlfriend and co-protagonist Amy while he is recovering on his buddy’s couch, 5 years before the story that takes place in the novel.
The transgender bible. Unfortunately, like the christian bible, too boring to ever read.
This isn’t a book review, because I’m not going to tell you that this is a “good book.” To be sure, this is a good book. Whittall is a writer’s writer, and this example of her work is an early text in what is sure to be the long career of a master craftsperson.
More than anything I hope that I might inspire you to go read this book, because it is an immensely important book. Holding Still might be the first of a new upsurge in literature about trans people – authentic narratives, executed skillfully and received with great acclaim. I want you to read this book and I want you to write a novel, because I want to read more of these. I want trans people to realize that our lives, that our communities, that our worlds are valuable and deserve to be recorded.
Ask your local independent bookseller to order Holding Still For As Long As Possible or, whatever, order it on Amazon here (sorry, independent booksellers).
What are your favorite trans and queer books? What do you want to read more of?
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the nonbookreviewish review, Tom! I look forward to reading this in the summer when I’m not overwhelmed by “gender theory and queer theory texts, delivered from the depths of the fetid cesspool of American universities.” Ha! Although I’ll still be reading some of those too. In this post and your post on the trans category split at LL, you take a couple of well deserved blows at the academic treatment of transfolks. You say above, “I want you to read this book and I want you to write a novel, because I want to read more of these. I want trans people to realize that our lives, that our communities, that our worlds are valuable and deserve to be recorded.” I feel the same way, not only about fiction and nonfiction but about theory and research – not questionnaires by any means! I’m thinking more of transacademics and trans-sensitive cisacademics engaging in in-depth discussions of lived experience and accurately representing that within the academy such that the knowledge that circulates there will not objectify us as these rare specimens. Your writing is very accessible and usually fiction has that same quality. If only ‘the transgender bible’ were written in this way. I have to admit – reading any of the Judiths these days makes my skin crawl because I know that most of the people that they often mis/use to make their points can’t or have no interest in trying to follow the plodding tangents — i definitely don’t. I would love to hear more from you on this subject – what you see wrong with academic treatment of transfolks, what, if any, value you find in it, and ones that you particularly like.
I really enjoy reading your posts here!
Austin HJ
Thanks Austin. Again, obviously I’m glad that there are people in universities that are doing valuable research, yada, yada. Just disappointed that there isn’t more of a balance between the academy and the arts.
“most of the people that they often mis/use to make their points can’t or have no interest in trying to follow the plodding tangents”
THIS.
“Where academic texts are derivative and parasitic, great novels are additive and creative.” – Love it
“All academics are bad, so read this book.” As a trans academic working for social justice for trans people–one who supports Original Plumbing and assigns it in classes–I have to say I’m a little offended. I’m also a little surprised that OP would publish such a cheap shot at such a diverse population of laborers. We aren’t all super privileged academic “stars,” you know. A lot of us teach in obscurity under very unfair working conditions, because we believe in the power of education. Boo, OP.
Just to clear the record, I also teach–at CUNY/Hunter College–for little pay and in complete obscurity. I’m not saying Judith Butler shouldn’t exist, and I’m glad she does, I’m just saying that it is a big problem that the overwhelming number of texts for/about trans people are queer theory/gender theory.
In contrast, look at gay & lesbian literature, which one might argue preceded the academic studies about gay & lesbian culture. Trans people are working in reverse order, I would argue because we’re not in control of the discourse, and also because our own transitions/life story/bodies mangled by surgery (including my own) are the primary texts.
I’m a “transademic” too. It’s hard for me to read a broadside attack on academia; everyone seems to love to put down academics these days, from the Right wing to the Left. It would be nice if people would sometimes resist jumping on the “lets hate theory/academics” bandwagon. Theory isn’t all bad, academics aren’t all bad, and lots of us get into this line of work out of a fundamental desire to contribute to social change. There are so many ways of doing that. Theory is one of them; tracking down and claiming “trans” texts is another (they’re out there; lesbian and gay lit. had to be reclaimed too). And I hate to say it but class is a factor, leisure reading, finding a book that “you” identify with, etc. – I get it that you want more good reading out there that reflects lived experience, but that can coexist with transademic activism! xo L
Super ifornamtive writing; keep it up.
“Trans people are working in reverse order, I would argue because we’re not in control of the discourse, and also because our own transitions/life story/bodies mangled by surgery (including my own) are the primary texts.”
Truth!
“…with whom they both want to sleep.”
Wow, thats a really clever way of tnhiinkg about it!