I’m A Trans Woman And This Is Why I Write
(pictured: Me, at Brooklyn College campus)
We are fundraising for a writing workshop just for trans women hosted at my school, Brooklyn College. Please donate!
Much like Maria Griffiths of Imogen Binnie’s Nevada, I grew up in what can only be described as “Cow Town, Pennsylvania… a shithole in the middle of nowhere.” A town outside of a town outside of Pittsburgh during the eighties and nineties, it had a population of 9,000, “none” of which, apparently, were gay. It was in this backwater hell that I was routinely harassed and ridiculed for being quiet, weird, and “faggy.” Like so many survivors of the American Small Town before me, I looked to books for some explanation as to the alienation and isolation that I felt. It was important to me, and fostered my imagination, the way only fiction can do. However, what I never managed to encounter in any of the many alien worlds, alternate dimensions, and babysitter’s clubs that I visited, was someone who understood me. Even now, with trans women more visible and represented than ever, nearly every story I’ve ever read about a trans woman was written by a cis person. All I want in my life is more books written by trans women.
I read Nevada a few years into my transition. It had been sitting on my shelf for a few months while I lived in Poughkeepsie, unread but often thought about. I often wondered how it would be once I eventually got around to it. I feared that it would bore me. When I finally read it while crashing on the couch of a Brooklyn punk house on Foster Ave populated exclusively by transsexuals, I cried. Since by that time I was already trying to forget the part of me that was like James H, I didn’t have the apparently common reaction where you just put the book down quietly and transition the next day. It had the most peculiar effect on me: it tickled the back of my brain so that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Slowly, over days, weeks, months, years I became obsessed. During that time, my existence slowly changed. I became interested in reading again. I made all my friends read it just so I could talk to them about it. I started writing (if you can call it that) again. I gave it to guys on grindr for laughs, leading to the creation of the oft-misunderstood term, egg. I embarrassed myself in front of its gracious author at least once, leading to a hilarious button that I treasure even as it reminds me what an idiot I’ve been. It was a slow build, but as I thought about it over those months and years since, with the help of a close, incredibly intelligent friend, I finally realized that my obsession stemmed not from what I saw in the book, but what it, and its author, saw in me.
What makes Nevada powerful isn’t that there is a trans woman in it. We are very represented. There are more trans women in movies and TV than ever, yet none of these portrayals interest me or my friends, because they aren’t for us. I can see myself in any story’s protagonist if I squint my eyes hard enough, so it’s not just having someone that’s “like me” to empathize with. Nor was it the powerful message its final page sends about what it means to live truth. What made Nevada powerful was that it assumed I would read it. It was written by a trans woman, for a trans woman. Here in front of me, with its peculiar orange cover, was physical proof that I wasn’t alone in the world. It was inclusion in a culture. “Have you read Nevada?” isn’t just a question, it’s a statement of identity. Much in the way that having read Homer made you a Greek, having read Nevada is rapidly becoming a cultural touchstone for trans women. A book assumes that I exist, therefore, I do. Nevada touched me because it was meant to. It was a world that I knew, occupied by people that I recognized. I had finally found home.
On my journey to understand Nevada, I slowly began to understand myself. When I first read it, it shifted something in me and I realized I actually had no idea what I wanted in life. At the time I was working in a Michelin-starred restaurant, 50-60 hours a week. I had no time to think, or feel. I thought I had solved all my problems with transition, and lacking any real commitment to myself, I pursued someone else’s dream for me. It was fun, but it lacked the creative fulfillment I had been seeking since those early days in Pennsylvania. One little book and one teensy tiny measly acid trip was enough to wake me up to my own desires. I quit that job. I had a lot of guilt but I needed to. I dropped out of culinary school, and never went back to Poughkeepsie. I stayed in Brooklyn with no prospects, crashing with an older trans woman who took care of me for a year while I did the work of growing up at 28. I invested all of my time into trans women. I spent hours of my day just talking to them, learning about them, their lives, their pain, and their joy. I supported them emotionally and shared with them whatever pittance of wisdom I had garnered throughout my strange life, as they shared theirs with me. I tried to recruit more people into identifying as trans. I felt myself changing, as I worked to change others. One day I looked up and had a new apartment, the most caring girlfriend in the world, and a different life. I was getting A’s in college, a far cry from my first college at 18 where I dropped out after a single semester that I spent drunk or asleep. I buried myself in my school work and all the amazing things I was learning. I got a room for this workshop and thought that would be the end of it. I never knew that I would have the chance to organize it. What I love about Nevada is what I love about this workshop. It’s for trans women. Twenty-six of us will come to my college in August and learn, not just from our teachers, but from the twenty-five other women they are surrounded by. I expect all of us will be a little different when it is over. I want more books and stories written by trans women. I want this workshop to happen so more people will have the confidence and skills to write them. I want our lives to be seen as real, and valid. That is why I write.
We are fundraising for a writing workshop just for trans women hosted at my school, Brooklyn College. Please donate!
