Hey everyone,

so, I'm a writer and critic, and I am working towards a PhD in English. While my focus is not on trans* literature, I've become more and more interested, since taking the first steps to presenting as female, in finding texts (specifically novels [including graphic novels], stories, and/or poems) that are related to trans* issues. Does anyone have a favourite piece of literature that connects to trans* issues in some way--a character who is explicitly trans*, a character who is likely trans*, a significant plot point connected to trans* issues in some way, a character that strongly subverts gender expectations in a way that can be linked to trans* struggles, or an author who is or likely would have been considered trans* if the term had existed when he or she (or a neutral pronoun of choice) was writing? I'm not looking for texts for a project, just to clarify--I'm just interested to see what you might bring up. 

For me, the first thing that comes to mind is Virginia Woolf's Orlando, a novel I always enjoy returning to, and then Fashion Beast by Alan Moore.

While there's a lot of flaws with it, I read a short trilogy a few years back called "G11" by Sarah Bayen. It's been quite a while so I'm hoping I don't get the titles wrong but I think they are something like:

G11 Mistaken Identity
G11 Planetfall
G11 Colony

Essentially, the main character is a kid on a colony ship that left Earth when it was destroyed three generations before. The ship and its technology were provided by an alien race (the Others) who did not understand human gender, and its population is overseen by one of its AIs (the Machine). When the new generation reaches 15, the adults are put in a cryo sleep, and the kids are assigned their adult roles.

I loved it for its themes of male and female "spirits" rather than sexual gender. Some of it is emotionally dark, and it was hard to read in my pre-self acceptance days, with themes of acceptance, self-acceptance, social roles and fitting in, and so on. Major flaws (in my mind) are that the use of pronouns are really jarring, calling the main character "he" throughout, even though acceptance as a girl comes really early in the story. Also, as far as protagonists go, she's kind of weak. You can also really tell at points that this was the author's first work.

Anyway, flaws aside, this is a story that stuck out in my mind when I read this question. I found it on Kindle, so it might still be there these days.

Written on the Body, by Jeannette Winterson, is interesting. While not explicitly trans-related, this book has a narrator-protagonist whose sex is not divulged. I was trying to write something trans-related along the same lines, so I guess this book scooped me.

I'm also fond of Tanith Lee's body-changing books, Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine. The latter is pretty fluffy; I prefer the former. These are YA books, but a lot of adults read them. In fact, I'm not sure they get much YA readership. I like the way people change sex indiscriminately and don't think anything of it. They appear to be quite sexually fluid, too. I wrote a short grad seminar paper on this one. Had a lot of "fun" navigating the pronoun problem.

You'll also find that John Varley has two or three (maybe more) stories having to do with body-changing, and I understand that at least one of his novels has similar themes. Heinlein has a character named Andy Libby who later appears as a woman, but there are no relevant stories about that. Still, he also has that time-travel story about a trans/intersex character, and he wrote I Will Fear No Evil, about a male brain transplanted into a woman's body.

People have also recommended Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex to me, but that's apparently about intersexuality. Still, it should be worth checking out.

There are a couple of children's novels out there now. I tried to read Luna (can't remember the author) and found it boring; I never finished. It doesn't help that the story is told through the eyes of a sibling rather than the trans character. But I understand that there's now a small handful of similar books for young people.

If you poke around, you'll find all sorts of stuff.

Jeanette Winterson is amazing in general! I would recommend checking out Middlesex. Thanks for the other suggestions--I wasn't familiar with Lee's or Varley's work.

Thanks for the trilogy suggestion, Jera! I hadn't heard of it before. I'll check it out.

Have any of you read Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness? If you haven't, I think you might enjoy it--it deals with fluid gender in an alien race in a really interesting way, and it's also just a really good novel.

Not a fan of LeGuin. I remember slogging through that very book when I was an undergrad. I also tried her Earthsea trilogy and didn't get very far. I believe I tried one more adult novel of hers, but I can't remember which. Haven't given her a try lately, but with such limited time, I'd rather read an author I don't know than one I read a while ago and didn't like. I'm not such a big fiction reader anymore, anyway.

I hear that Myra Breckinridge, the movie, is quite awful, but I know nothing about the book.

Prehistoric fiction has been quite popular in the years following Jean Auel's success; I wonder if anyone has written any PF about a prehistoric two-spirit Native American. The PF market is already established; such a novel would have an existing readership and could "sneak in," so to speak.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote a book called "I will fear no evil" about a male who finds himself in the body of a female.

Adam Thaxton has gender fluid and trans characters in some of his books. Not sure that all of them are published yet. I read him pre-pub, he's a friend of mine.

Quote from: Arch on August 14, 2014, 03:20:52 PM
Not a fan of LeGuin. I remember slogging through that very book when I was an undergrad. I also tried her Earthsea trilogy and didn't get very far. I believe I tried one more adult novel of hers, but I can't remember which. Haven't given her a try lately, but with such limited time, I'd rather read an author I don't know than one I read a while ago and didn't like. I'm not such a big fiction reader anymore, anyway.

I hear that Myra Breckinridge, the movie, is quite awful, but I know nothing about the book.

Prehistoric fiction has been quite popular in the years following Jean Auel's success; I wonder if anyone has written any PF about a prehistoric two-spirit Native American. The PF market is already established; such a novel would have an existing readership and could "sneak in," so to speak.

Ah, interesting about Le Guin. The only other novel I've read of hers is The Lathe of Heaven, which is not a particularly well-written book but does have some interesting ideas in it about time and memory. What was it about The Left Hand of Darkness that turned you off it?

Quote from: suzifrommd on August 14, 2014, 05:06:29 PM
Robert A. Heinlein wrote a book called "I will fear no evil" about a male who finds himself in the body of a female.

Ah, yes--that's a good example, too. Thanks for that. I'm always interested in narratives like that, when the gender transition in question happens unexpectedly or by accident, though all too often (especially in films where a cis-male cross-dresses) this appears as a comedic trope rather than any forming genuine look into gender.

Quote from: Dee Walker on August 14, 2014, 05:47:58 PM
Adam Thaxton has gender fluid and trans characters in some of his books. Not sure that all of them are published yet. I read him pre-pub, he's a friend of mine.

Sounds cool. I'd be happy to learn more about these, particularly texts involving genderfluidity.

The closest thing that comes to mind is Clive Barker's Imajica. There's a character in the story called "Pie 'oh' Pah" who has genitalia that forms accordingly to one's desires. The book isn't focused on that character, but they are one of the main ones. Here is Clive's painting of Pie 'oh' Pah: http://www.clivebarker.info/pieohpah2.html

Here's the story synopsis from Amazon:

"Imajica is an epic beyond compare: vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie 'oh' pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension.

That dimension is one of five in the great system called Imajica. They are worlds that are utterly unlike our own, but are ruled, peopled, and haunted by species whose lives are intricately connected with ours. As Gentle, Judith, and Pie 'oh' pah travel the Imajica, they uncover a trail of crimes and intimate betrayals, leading them to a revelation so startling that it changes reality forever."

Quote from: sororcaeli on August 18, 2014, 07:40:06 AM
The closest thing that comes to mind is Clive Barker's Imajica. There's a character in the story called "Pie 'oh' Pah" who has genitalia that forms accordingly to one's desires. The book isn't focused on that character, but they are one of the main ones. Here is Clive's painting of Pie 'oh' Pah: http://www.clivebarker.info/pieohpah2.html

Here's the story synopsis from Amazon:

"Imajica is an epic beyond compare: vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie 'oh' pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension.

That dimension is one of five in the great system called Imajica. They are worlds that are utterly unlike our own, but are ruled, peopled, and haunted by species whose lives are intricately connected with ours. As Gentle, Judith, and Pie 'oh' pah travel the Imajica, they uncover a trail of crimes and intimate betrayals, leading them to a revelation so startling that it changes reality forever."

Nice! My best friend recommended Imajica to me two months ago, though I haven't read it as yet. Once I finish with exams, it'll probably be the first "fun" novel I pick up. And thanks for the link to the painting; I had no idea Barker painted. I haven't read any of his other work as yet.

Quote from: Gabrielle_22 on August 18, 2014, 09:04:13 AM
Nice! My best friend recommended Imajica to me two months ago, though I haven't read it as yet. Once I finish with exams, it'll probably be the first "fun" novel I pick up. And thanks for the link to the painting; I had no idea Barker painted. I haven't read any of his other work as yet.

I think he's always drawn or painted the images in all of his books, but they especially started becoming more prominent in his ABARAT series. Here's a video about it:


And there are a few more out there, I believe.

Quote from: Gabrielle_22 on August 16, 2014, 10:25:03 PM
Ah, interesting about Le Guin. The only other novel I've read of hers is The Lathe of Heaven, which is not a particularly well-written book but does have some interesting ideas in it about time and memory. What was it about The Left Hand of Darkness that turned you off it?

I honestly don't remember. I read it for an undergrad course more than thirty years ago, and I remember just being vaguely bored. I mean, it had some nice ideas, but it didn't grab me. Maybe it was too talky? Maybe it had too much extraneous material interfering with the story? Or maybe I just didn't like her writing style. The first Earthsea book didn't grab me, either, so I stopped reading it. But then, I'm not fond of fantasy. On the other hand, the only fantasy I normally like is for children and adolescents, so I thought I would like the Earthsea books, and I very much didn't want to continue reading. I tried because I thought I "ought" to read the series.

Would you say that LeGuin and Neil Gaiman have any similarities? He's another one of those authors people think I should like, and I hate hate hated American Gods and Coraline--forced myself to finish both--and couldn't get very far into the Sandman series. I thought that even though I found him a lousy writer, maybe the graphic novels would do something for me.

Of course, he doesn't appear to write about gender stuff.

No one has to like any author. I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for instance, and his style of writing usually divides readers squarely into camps of godlike worship or pronounced hatred. It is what it is.

As for Gaiman and this thread's topic, he does have some noticeable gender identity stuff in his writing, most prominently in the Sandman graphic novels. One of the Endless in the series, Desire, is explicitly gender-mutable, able to be both male and female or neither.

I don't think Gaiman is a great prose stylist, and the quality of his work varies for me. My favourite traditional novel of his is Stardust; I think American Gods is interesting theoretically but is not that well-written (though, to be fair, the standard available version of the novel appears to be an abridged version; there is a more recent "complete" version that Gaiman released that contains 12,000 or so additional words, which is supposed to be better than but not vastly different from the abridged edition). The Ocean at the End of the Lane, to me, is worth checking out. I like his Sandman series more than anything else he has done; my avatar, after all, is a version of Death of the Endless. His short stories I tend to find more interesting in idea than enjoyable to read or containing any sort of compelling characters; "Study in Emerald," for instance, is clever and interesting theoretically if you like Lovecraft, Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and historical mash-up fiction a la Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series, but it wouldn't do much for me if I wasn't already a fan in those areas, and so it functions more like niche fan fiction than anything else.

I appreciate the way Gaiman often tries to show that there is wonder in a world that can seem wonder-free, as well as his defenses of reading and libraries, and so he is sometimes useful to me (more for his essays and articles) when I teach freshman English/composition courses. But as a writer, I find him over-hyped, with the exception of for the Sandman series (and there, with the exception of the first graphic novel, which is nowhere near the quality of the ones to come).

Ah, so Gaiman does dabble in gender. Interesting.

I never understood why American Gods beat out Passage for the Hugo. I know that Passage got a little too repetitive with the big metaphor, and some people found the little kid annoying and the big reveal anticlimactic. The funny thing is that I don't like being hit over the head, but I didn't mind that the metaphor occurred maybe once or twice too often; I can't stand kids, but this one was very realistic to me; and I often see the big surprise a mile away, but I actually didn't see this one coming: Mine was more like Huxley's response to natural selection, a sort of "Oh. Of course. Why didn't I think of that?"

Retrospectively, I think that Passage is a reasonable response to that cinematic travesty Hereafter, which was so full of holes that I was calling for ham and rye to go with it.

How have you been using Gaiman in freshman comp?

Well, firstly, when I teach freshman comp, I often find that my students come to the course with little to no interest in reading for pleasure, and so a portion of my course tends to revolve around discussing with my students the history of reading and writing, why libraries matter, how reading practices might vary on different mediums (print, e-reading, etc.), the future of reading, etc. The one article I often use by Gaiman is a somewhat lengthy piece that was published in the Guardian in 2013, adapted from a speech he gave in 2012. It's called "Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming." (I chose a long piece partly because a number of my students profess to despise, if not be unable to, read articles even half the length of this, but because it is a discussion/quiz-based class, they have to read it in entirety, or practice pretty good skimming.)

This is a link to it. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming

I also once used a cartoon version of a Hostess ad that features Sandman characters, each responding to the product in a way that conforms to their character's traits. This was a jump-off for a discussion of how flat characters differ from round characters and how recognisable figures may be used to sell products in the media (and from there, a discussion of rhetorical strategies--ethos, pathos, logos).

The cartoon version of the ad is linked to in here. http://io9.com/5964904/the-hostess-fruit-pie-ad-sandman-and-the-endless-never-made

Thanks for the reference. I would click on the link, but I hate reading and writing.

Doncha love it when they tell you that on the first day of class? I always want to say something like, "I'm sorry to hear that. Have you seen a doctor about it?" or "We're sort of in the same boat; I can't stand people."

Neither of which, alas, is an even remotely PC response.

Nevada (Imogen Binnie) is great; probably one of the best books I have ever read overall, and the rhetorical question aside, it's actually a really great book to read.  Troubling the Line is a wonderful transgender and queer poetry anthology...