Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Burma and Thailand

by Mariette Pathy Allen (Photographer), Zackary Drucker (Foreword), Eli Coleman (Contributor)

In collaboration with Dr. Eli Coleman, professor and director of the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota, Transcendents studies the phenomenon of gender variance among the spirit cults of Burma and Thailand. This book combines a raw, personal, photographic standpoint with an anthropological and sexological perspective on the genderfluid spirit mediums in Thailand and Burma. Mariette Pathy Allen has been a pioneering force in gender consciousness, contributing to numerous cultural and academic publications about gender variance and lecturing worldwide. Dr. Eli Coleman is a founding editor of the International Journal of Transgenderism and past president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Zackary Drucker is an award-winning cultural producer, and trans woman who breaks down the way we think about gender.

142 pages, Hardcover

Published November 14, 2017

Reviews

[Morgan M. Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

Transcendents: Spirit Mediums of Burma and Thailand is a gorgeous collection of photography by Mariette Pathy Allen, who has spent over forty years documenting communities of gender non-forming people around the world. The subjects of this series are Nat Kadaw and Maa Khii, spirits mediums in Burma and Thailand respectively, who can be of any gender but of whom a growing majority are now male-assigned at birth people who identify to a greater or lesser extent as women.

The book, though conscious of it, definitely does not manage to escape the ethnographic gaze. My big wish would have been to features quotes from or interviews with the mediums themselves. The brief explanatory notes are all written by a Western scholar who, though making efforts to be ethical, is simply no substitute for the voices of the people depicted.

The photography itself is breathtaking, though, and I'm so glad I got this book.