I was hoping to know precisely how depressed and/or weirded out you want to be, but oh well. I usually wouldn’t do this but I guess here is a little treat. You’ll want to check Storygraph content warnings for all of these, they’re too “old media” to have them but most desperately need them:
Click to REVEAL THE HORRORS
Nevada by Imogen Binnie: Maybe some people have a religion with holy scriptures and such; I have this book and all its stupid quotes. Near as I can tell this is the chronological very beginning of this whole, thing(though it’s worthy to note that other contemporary examples like I’ve Got a Time Bomb by Sybille Lamb and Otros Valles by Jamie Berrout probably developed independently). Nevada is the book with the tropes you will see repeated or subverted or just replicated by accident in a bunch of the others. There is a trans woman, Maria Griffiths, and she is sad and emotionally shut off and her life sucks, even if she’s a privileged little shit.
Otros Valles by Jamie Berrout: Most of these things don’t have that much of a political consciousness, and some are downright lib in places, but Otros Valles spends a lot of time talking about mechanisms of oppression and is pretty cool. Nice antidote to Nevada, and I can recommend all of Berrout’s other work, especially Mutual Aid Publishing.
Little Fish by Casey Plett: If you were raised in a Canadian Mennonite community and suspect that one of your grandparents may be trans, this is the book for you! It’s weird but pleasant, maybe one of the less depressing out of this group. Casey Plett has other short stories in A Safe Girl To Love if you like this one.
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters: Heir apparent to Nevada, same depressed trans woman in New York but with more ruminations on queer parenthood and how The Cis are sometimes almost cool. Nevada is necessary context for this imo, unless you’re already a depressed Gen X trans woman.
Little Blue Encyclopedia by Hazel Jane Plante: This is the first one that doesn’t have any apparent ties to Nevada and it’s a great read, love me a sad lil gay t4t rumination on the author’s crush on her deceased het friend. It’s a rare sort of emotional catharsis in a subcategory of highly emotionally detached books.
Fluids by May Leitz: The grossest horror fiction I’ve ever read, but a really superb splatterpunk/extreme horror re-orientation focused on a queer/trans protagonist. It’s stomach churning but a really worthwhile ride imo. Girl Flesh fucks too, and is a lot less gross, but has cis leads.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker Martin: Not the best book on this list, kind of a mess and honestly sometimes it’s just emotional suffering to read, but it has shades of intersectionality and its narrative that addresses political consciousness and assimilationism is pretty rad. It’s about as terminally online as you can get for a setting without internet, though.
The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside: It’s the pulp-action-horror sapphic-t4t-romance set in a post-USA north america featuring full communism and some anarchism, it’s weird how the book is into Lenin but not Stalin, but it’s a really big expansive messy examination of how fascism be in the post apocalypse, and shit. By turns inspired by Fallout, STALKER, Dawn of the Dead and more.
That’s about it for really really good ones, I think. Nice little starter set, and also now I’m very recognisable. If you ever decide to read any of these you can hmu and I will say things about em probably.
I was thinking the specific subsection of freakish trans literary fiction novels over which you have brainworms, which I know nothing of.
Nobody knows anything of them, it’s a mystery
I was hoping to know precisely how depressed and/or weirded out you want to be, but oh well. I usually wouldn’t do this but I guess here is a little treat. You’ll want to check Storygraph content warnings for all of these, they’re too “old media” to have them but most desperately need them:
Click to REVEAL THE HORRORS
Nevada by Imogen Binnie: Maybe some people have a religion with holy scriptures and such; I have this book and all its stupid quotes. Near as I can tell this is the chronological very beginning of this whole, thing(though it’s worthy to note that other contemporary examples like I’ve Got a Time Bomb by Sybille Lamb and Otros Valles by Jamie Berrout probably developed independently). Nevada is the book with the tropes you will see repeated or subverted or just replicated by accident in a bunch of the others. There is a trans woman, Maria Griffiths, and she is sad and emotionally shut off and her life sucks, even if she’s a privileged little shit.
Otros Valles by Jamie Berrout: Most of these things don’t have that much of a political consciousness, and some are downright lib in places, but Otros Valles spends a lot of time talking about mechanisms of oppression and is pretty cool. Nice antidote to Nevada, and I can recommend all of Berrout’s other work, especially Mutual Aid Publishing.
Little Fish by Casey Plett: If you were raised in a Canadian Mennonite community and suspect that one of your grandparents may be trans, this is the book for you! It’s weird but pleasant, maybe one of the less depressing out of this group. Casey Plett has other short stories in A Safe Girl To Love if you like this one.
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters: Heir apparent to Nevada, same depressed trans woman in New York but with more ruminations on queer parenthood and how The Cis are sometimes almost cool. Nevada is necessary context for this imo, unless you’re already a depressed Gen X trans woman.
Little Blue Encyclopedia by Hazel Jane Plante: This is the first one that doesn’t have any apparent ties to Nevada and it’s a great read, love me a sad lil gay t4t rumination on the author’s crush on her deceased het friend. It’s a rare sort of emotional catharsis in a subcategory of highly emotionally detached books.
Fluids by May Leitz: The grossest horror fiction I’ve ever read, but a really superb splatterpunk/extreme horror re-orientation focused on a queer/trans protagonist. It’s stomach churning but a really worthwhile ride imo. Girl Flesh fucks too, and is a lot less gross, but has cis leads.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker Martin: Not the best book on this list, kind of a mess and honestly sometimes it’s just emotional suffering to read, but it has shades of intersectionality and its narrative that addresses political consciousness and assimilationism is pretty rad. It’s about as terminally online as you can get for a setting without internet, though.
The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside: It’s the pulp-action-horror sapphic-t4t-romance set in a post-USA north america featuring full communism and some anarchism, it’s weird how the book is into Lenin but not Stalin, but it’s a really big expansive messy examination of how fascism be in the post apocalypse, and shit. By turns inspired by Fallout, STALKER, Dawn of the Dead and more.
That’s about it for really really good ones, I think. Nice little starter set, and also now I’m very recognisable. If you ever decide to read any of these you can hmu and I will say things about em probably.