Working Magic
[This is about the Inaugural Trans Womenâs Writing Workshop. If you think this workshop is as important as I do, please consider donating to the universal access fund.] Iâm going to this writing workshop for trans women in New York City. Me and twenty-five other trans women are going to learn to work magic. Sarah Schulman and Casey Plett are going to teach us, and weâre all going to learn from each other. This is a big deal. I donât think anything like this has ever happened. I know nothing like this has ever happened to me. But this isnât so important to me because Iâve never been to New York City. This isnât so important to me because I spent my early years in a rural unincorporated community of a few hundred people where making it meant getting a job in a factory and moving to a town of a few thousand people. This isnât so important to me because I need help with my writing, though goddess knows I do. This is important to me because trans lit saved my life.
Trans lit saved my fucking life. I donât mean that in the mundane sense that it kept my body functioning, though it might have done that as well. I mean that it rescued me from isolation and numb confusion. It showed me that there was real magic in the spells Iâd spent my life weaving to no real effect. It showed me that I wasnât alone. Trans lit showed me what creative writing can do. Let me rewind a little.
I went thirty fucking years without knowing what it felt like to connect to a piece of writing. I mean I read books. I read voraciously. I think I read just about every book in the library at the county school I went to. I read my grandparentsâ set of old encyclopedias. When my mom got a job waiting tables and moved us to a town with a public library, I methodically worked my way through most of the science fiction and fantasy section. I read all the horror I could get my hands on. I read my grandma Peggyâs old paperback copy of Walden, the one with Civil Disobedience in the back, which I also read. I read the Bhagavad Gita and the Avatamsaka Sutra. I read all kinds of shit, but I never really felt a word of it. I liked stuff well enough obviously or I wouldnât have kept reading, but it all felt flat somehow. I thought all writing felt that way to everyone.
I wrote a lot growing up too. People in my lifeâmy grandma especiallyâencouraged the hell out of me, but I was just as numb to my own work as I was to anyone elseâs. I had such a deep need to obfuscate my truth. The closet does that I guess. I wrote short stories where the nameless protagonists invariably died some miserable death before they could have any sort of meaningful interaction. I committed suicide on the page over and over and over again. I wrote descriptions of the world around me as a machine might write them, without any understanding of real significance. I perfected the art of saying nothing at all with meticulous detail and exquisite form. I eventually moved on to academia, where they reward that kind of writing.
Last year I picked up a copy of Casey Plettâs A Safe Girl To Love. Holy shit. Those stories felt real to me. The people in them felt real. People like me. I remember wondering if cis people felt that way every time they read a piece of fiction. I still donât know the answer to that but I think maybe if so theyâd all be writers. This realization of the magic latent in words hit me at the perfect time. I was just out to my family, struggling with the meaning and ethical implications of my academic work, and probably more vulnerable than Iâd ever allowed myself to be. I read Nevada next. Holy shit. I started devouring books by trans women. I looked for more work online. Fiction. Poetry. Essays. I started writing again, not some dumbass paper on the social construction of phenomenological time but really writing. I started writing poems again. I started submitting my work to publications. I kept reading everything I could find.
A little less than a year later, Iâve read a whole lot, Iâve made a lot of new friends, Iâve published a few poems, Iâve done a few spoken word performances in Oklahoma City, and Iâve been invited to this workshop. Trans lit has been a path to community for me, a way out of isolation. It has shown me a way to give back, to contribute something to the lives of girls like me. I want to do that. Iâve withdrawn from the PhD program where I was planning to spend the next few years of my life for a whole lot of complicated reasons that I wonât go into here. Suffice it to say that Iâm standing at a threshold, and I donât know whatâs next, but I know I want to keep writing. I know I want to give back the magic that Iâve been given.
Iâm still working on my writing every day. Iâm still trying to find that magic in my own voice, but I know itâs there now. I know I can learn to weave the kinds of spells that have real power in this world. I know I can write things that let trans girls growing up in tiny rural communities know that they arenât alone. This is why I write. This workshop is so important. I hope youâll support it if you can.
