Best of
Trans

2002

One Man's Trash


Ivan E. Coyote - 2002
    The talent evident in that first collection is confirmed with One Man’s Trash, a series of connected stories about being queer, searching out new frontiers, and being on the road.The characters in One Man’s Trash make evident the child in all of us, when heroes and superheroes won the day.Including the hilarious account of an attempted lesbian wedding in a Las Vegas chapel, and a touching tale of being beguiled by an uncle’s independent-minded girlfriend, these are stories about being on the road: to the northern tundra or the southern desert, through cities and towns, on horses, in trucks and vans, with friends, family, and lovers. In achingly personal tones, Ivan Coyote paints beautiful and honest portraits of life, the road, and the spirits within.

Mark 947: A Life Shaped by God, Gender and Force of Will


Calpernia Sarah Addams - 2002
    Born a boy to loving but religious parents in the rural heartland of Tennessee, Calpernia Addams found her way on an unlighted path from forbidden dreams to fulfillment as a scholar, showgirl and eventually, as a woman.Sultry stage siren by night, intellectual chameleon by day, she worked her way to the top of Nashville’s underground entertainment scene without ever succumbing to drugs, alcohol or bitterness, and through it all never lost her heart. When love walked into her new life in the form of a handsome young Army private, it seemed everything had at last come together. Then at the pinnacle of her career, as she was crowned Tennessee Entertainer of the Year in front of hundreds of adoring fans, her love was murdered in his sleep sixty miles away by bigoted fellow soldiers, sparking a national controversy that resonates still.Whether ablaze in the dazzle of the spotlight or haunting the woods of Tennessee in flannel and pigtails, Calpernia lives her life with the humor and spirit of a woman who can face anything and still move forward with hope intact.

Wanting in Arabic


Trish Salah - 2002
    Braiding theoretic concerns with the ambivalences of sexed and raced identity.WANTING IN ARABIC attempts to traverse the fantasies of foundational loss and aggressive nostalgia in order to further a poetics of a conscious partiality of being, of generous struggle and comic rather than tragic misrecognition. "Trish Salah's poetic sequence is not simply a narrative of gender change; it's a wandering, thoughtful text, one both fierce and tremulous"--Erin Moure. "This is a beautiful and disturbing collection of poems, writing from the uncharted langscape of the third sex"--Mary Di Michele.

A Day in the Life of P.


Kari Edwards - 2002
    LGBT Studies. "Sonner or later it seemed people would need to start writing in groups. It seems like the people who died in the World Trade Center must have died for someone and shouldn't everyone write a book for them. And what about me? Shouldn't everyone write a book for me. Who would write a book for all the women, or all the men. The queers. How about all the people who died in the holocaust. What about all the people who didn't. What about the people working in the buildings not next, but not far from the World Trade Center. Or in other cities. Why doesn't everybody write a book for them? And who would be its author. kari edwards comes up & down like a cloud writing a sneering exuberant millennial book, speaking for the army of us who know something else, but don't know how to say or do. kari edwards' A DAY IN THE LIFE OF P is a total fucking masterpiece. She's a monk postmodernist, kari writes in groups. People should start chanting this book on streetcorners. I can't stop reading it, it's screamingly grey, it's better than phone sex, than Burroughs or Proust, it's outrageously cool"--Eileen Myles.

Hermaphrodeities: The Transgender Spirituality Workbook


Raven Kaldera - 2002