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Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity
The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.
Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible.
Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.
Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible.
Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published December 5, 2017
About the author
C. Riley Snorton
4 books34 followersC. Riley Snorton is associate professor of Africana studies and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Cornell University and visiting associate professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is author of Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (Minnesota, 2014).
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February 2, 2021
Trans history in the US tends to focus on white trans people like Christine Jorgenson, who was one of the first to publicly undergo gender confirmation surgery in the 1950s. While Jorgenson quickly rose to fame, many Black trans people – and especially Black trans women – were disappeared in her shadow. White trans women like Jorgenson began to achieve acceptance by appealing to the dominant norms of white womanhood (domesticity, respectability, heterosexuality) and differentiating themselves from Black gender variant people. The media often ridiculed Black trans women as failed imitations of Jorgenson. Combatting historical erasure, Dr. C. Riley Snorton highlights an expansive tradition of Black trans life and resistance.
In 1836 Black trans sex worker Mary Jones was charged with larceny for stealing the wallets of her clients. On June 16, 1836 Jones showed up to court wearing a wig, white earrings, and a dress. Everyone in the audience and the court mocked her for her appearance – someone even tried to grab the wig off her head. When asked why she was dressed this way she said,” I have always attended parties among the people of my own Colour dressed in this way – and in New Orleans I always dressed this way.” Jones pled not guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. A week after her trial a lithographic portrait called “The Man-Monster” began to appear in print shops in NYC and became widely circulated as a way to demonize Jones.
In 1945 Lucy Hicks Anderson was a Black trans woman who was arrested and convicted of perjury. The government accused her of lying about her sex on her marriage license. In the face of virulent racism and transphobia during the trial, Anderson had the conviction to argue: “I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman,” and “I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.” When asked if she wore a wig she responded, “If I think I look better with a wig, I do.” Prosecutors kept asking if she had male sex organs and Anderson refused to answer. After Anderson was arrested she was forbidden from wearing women’s clothes in men’s prison.
In the 1950s Ava Betty Brown was a Black trans woman tried for the charge of female impersonation and fined one hundred dollars. The local news reported her home address after she was charged. The case was written about in the Black press like Ebony and Jet magazines where she was labeled the “Double-Sexed Defendant.” In response to being misgendered Brown declared: “If I’m a man, I don’t know it!”
Jim McHarris was a Black transmasculine person who began to exclusively wear male clothing in 1939. He lived in Memphis, Chicago, and other midwestern cities working a host of jobs as a cook, auto mechanic, and shipyard worker. In 1953 he moved to Kosciusko, MS where he became engaged to marry a woman. In 1954 he got pulled over by the police at a traffic stop and underwent a pat down search, accusing McHarris of being female. McHarris was forced to strip off his clothes and reveal his breasts and genitals in front of the judge and arresting officers. After serving thirty days in jail he argued, “I ain’t done nothing wrong and I ain’t breaking no laws.”
Our ability to exist in public today is thanks to Black trans leaders like this who paved the way. Their self-knowledge, determination, and everyday resistance in the face of criminalization led cities to mostly stop enforcing cross-dressing laws in the 1970s.
In 1836 Black trans sex worker Mary Jones was charged with larceny for stealing the wallets of her clients. On June 16, 1836 Jones showed up to court wearing a wig, white earrings, and a dress. Everyone in the audience and the court mocked her for her appearance – someone even tried to grab the wig off her head. When asked why she was dressed this way she said,” I have always attended parties among the people of my own Colour dressed in this way – and in New Orleans I always dressed this way.” Jones pled not guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. A week after her trial a lithographic portrait called “The Man-Monster” began to appear in print shops in NYC and became widely circulated as a way to demonize Jones.
In 1945 Lucy Hicks Anderson was a Black trans woman who was arrested and convicted of perjury. The government accused her of lying about her sex on her marriage license. In the face of virulent racism and transphobia during the trial, Anderson had the conviction to argue: “I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman,” and “I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.” When asked if she wore a wig she responded, “If I think I look better with a wig, I do.” Prosecutors kept asking if she had male sex organs and Anderson refused to answer. After Anderson was arrested she was forbidden from wearing women’s clothes in men’s prison.
In the 1950s Ava Betty Brown was a Black trans woman tried for the charge of female impersonation and fined one hundred dollars. The local news reported her home address after she was charged. The case was written about in the Black press like Ebony and Jet magazines where she was labeled the “Double-Sexed Defendant.” In response to being misgendered Brown declared: “If I’m a man, I don’t know it!”
Jim McHarris was a Black transmasculine person who began to exclusively wear male clothing in 1939. He lived in Memphis, Chicago, and other midwestern cities working a host of jobs as a cook, auto mechanic, and shipyard worker. In 1953 he moved to Kosciusko, MS where he became engaged to marry a woman. In 1954 he got pulled over by the police at a traffic stop and underwent a pat down search, accusing McHarris of being female. McHarris was forced to strip off his clothes and reveal his breasts and genitals in front of the judge and arresting officers. After serving thirty days in jail he argued, “I ain’t done nothing wrong and I ain’t breaking no laws.”
Our ability to exist in public today is thanks to Black trans leaders like this who paved the way. Their self-knowledge, determination, and everyday resistance in the face of criminalization led cities to mostly stop enforcing cross-dressing laws in the 1970s.
April 20, 2020
Meticulously researched and daring in ambition, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity fails to deliver on its promises but nevertheless offers an interesting set of cultural readings. The title misleadingly frames this book as a history of Black trans identity, but the author quickly admits in his introduction that he won’t actually be offering history, neither about the emergence of trans as an identity nor about the changing social life of Black trans people in America. Instead C. Riley Snorton examines a series of disparate case studies that illustrate the ways in which transness has been constructed as inextricable from Blackness since its earliest appearances in public discourse, from fugitive slave narratives to Hollywood films. His points are interesting, especially those he raises in the book’s second half, but his language is needlessly opaque. It often obscures his arguments, shrouding them in ambiguity and equivocation. Many academics love this kind of style, so it’s understandable why Snorton would have felt pressured to adopt it—but clarity makes for much more stimulating and debatable work.
March 12, 2018
Organized around a series of events that provide occasions for bringing both signs—blackness and transness—into the same frame, Black on Both Sides is not a history per se so much as it is a set of political propositions, theories of history, and writerly experiments.
If I had absorbed the above quote properly before I bought this book, I probably wouldn't have bought it. Snorton works in cultural studies methods, with connections and theories zinging around every second sentence and the reading of symbolism and revelatory meaning. Snorton revels and excels in this, exploring the intersection how concepts of fungibility and transition exist in the construction of blackness, and how Blackness, as a condition of possibility that made transness conceivable in the twilight of formal slavery, would require “revision” to engender itself as modern.
So if what you are looking for is a history of African-Americans who identify as trans, this is not really that at all. If you like your history, as I tend to, as straight down the line than this, it might not be what you are looking for. This kind of analysis tends towards exploring coelescence in themes - for me, it ends up making wild leaps to explain individual circumstances and events which might easily have gone differently. This kind of process drove me nuts in literary studies, where meaning seemed always to be derived from events that had a specific set of factors leading up to them, without necessarily accounting for those factors. So, for example
In prosecutor James Elworth’s closing argument at the Nissen trial, his injunction to the jury included these words: “Consider Phillip DeVine. If you can imagine the terror of Phillip DeVine sitting in that room, this young amputee, sitting in that other room listenin[g] to two people die and knowing—he had to know—he—he was next.” Here, one encounters an evocation and description of DeVine as a figure in wait of his ultimate and untimely demise, a condition which Fanon aptly defined as a consequence of colonial violence, wherein waiting is the resultant expression of a “history that others have compiled.”The decision of a prosecutor designed to elicit empathy from a jury takes on bigger symbolic portent of enshrining the state of colonial dispossession and theft of power. I hate this stuff.
But Snorton is undoubtedly good at it. I certainly do understand how this language might be described as beautiful. He dances around concepts and ideas - they come fast, which is hard if you are not used to the precision of this language and analysis, but the fastness is a method of exploration. This is not my thing at all, but if it is, I think you'll love it.
In many ways, this has turned into a strange review. My dislike of cultural theory, and the primacy of text and language that entails really does mean I pretty much hate read most of the book. But the fact that this isn't a form of academia which helps me towards understanding doesn't mean it never will be for someone else. I genuinly believe truth emerges from interaction between both individuals and knowledge frameworks. So this book probably has a place, but it isn't on my (virtual) bookshelf.
Now will someone who likes this stuff review it so I can stop feeling guilty for the two stars?
November 9, 2018
I enjoyed this but it was extremely academic and difficult to read. It did get a lot better towards the end which is why it got an additional star. I just cant give it more than three stars because I feel that there is a point when over use of academic language intimidates and bogs down the message and can even make the point an author is trying to make impossible for non-academics to grasp. I do think the point this author was making, what I could understand of it, was interesting. I do feel this was a well researched and very well written book.
Anyway, I enjoyed this and I thought it was well written and it really got so interesting at the end. It was worth sticking it out and I am glad I put in the effort, but I am not sure I grasped the point the author was making as well as I would have liked to.
Anyway, I enjoyed this and I thought it was well written and it really got so interesting at the end. It was worth sticking it out and I am glad I put in the effort, but I am not sure I grasped the point the author was making as well as I would have liked to.
June 17, 2019
I really wanted to like this book, but it’s written in such academic jargon that it practically needs to be translated, and also spends surprisingly little time talking about trans people at all, let alone black trans people.
Read
March 18, 2020Honestly, I’m not sure how to review books like this that have a very academic nature to them. I don’t think I have the knowledge background to really appreciate the full scope of what he is writing about, as there are chapters which analyze events or books assuming the reader already knows the facts/has read the books. Still, I did learn some things so.
November 21, 2017
Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity is an exceptional and beautifully written book in which C. Riley Snorton explores the intersections of blackness and transness. The range of archival materials is astounding and Snorton's analysis is just mind blowing. His resistance of the dominant periodization of trans as emerging with the clinic is incredibly compelling.
Though the book’s title offers a “a racial history,” Snorton claims that “the problem under review here is time” (xiv) and that the book “is not a history per se so much as it is a set of political propositions, theories of history, and writerly experiments” (6). In searching for a vocabulary for Black and trans life, Snorton argues that “blackness finds articulation within transness” (8) while Blackness is “a condition of possibility that made transness conceivable in the twilight of formal slavery” (135). The two share connections which Snorton calls “transversal,” yet there are also transitive connections that unite the two in “moments of transition” (9).
Central to Snorton’s discussion is Hortense Spillers and her formulation of flesh, which demonstrates how “sex and gender have been expressed and arranged according to the logics that sustained racial slavery” (53). Further, the fungibility of flesh enables fugitive action, as he notes in chapter two, while in chapter three, he analyzes the Black mother figure as a “zone of nonbeing” and an “onto-epistemological framework for black personhood” (108). Putting Blackness and transness in conversation with one another is not only necessary, but yields “insights that surpass an additive logic” that may cultivate “strategies for inhabiting unlivable worlds” (7). Following Fanon, Snorton is interested in the “mechanics of invention” and thus seeks “to understand the conditions of emergence of things and being that may not yet exist” (xiv).
Though the book’s title offers a “a racial history,” Snorton claims that “the problem under review here is time” (xiv) and that the book “is not a history per se so much as it is a set of political propositions, theories of history, and writerly experiments” (6). In searching for a vocabulary for Black and trans life, Snorton argues that “blackness finds articulation within transness” (8) while Blackness is “a condition of possibility that made transness conceivable in the twilight of formal slavery” (135). The two share connections which Snorton calls “transversal,” yet there are also transitive connections that unite the two in “moments of transition” (9).
Central to Snorton’s discussion is Hortense Spillers and her formulation of flesh, which demonstrates how “sex and gender have been expressed and arranged according to the logics that sustained racial slavery” (53). Further, the fungibility of flesh enables fugitive action, as he notes in chapter two, while in chapter three, he analyzes the Black mother figure as a “zone of nonbeing” and an “onto-epistemological framework for black personhood” (108). Putting Blackness and transness in conversation with one another is not only necessary, but yields “insights that surpass an additive logic” that may cultivate “strategies for inhabiting unlivable worlds” (7). Following Fanon, Snorton is interested in the “mechanics of invention” and thus seeks “to understand the conditions of emergence of things and being that may not yet exist” (xiv).
November 11, 2019
The subtitle of this book, "Black on Both Sides," is misleading and not in a particularly positive way. Claiming to be a racial history, in the first few pages the author outright expresses he won't be doing historical work. Though the starting point for each of the chapters in the book is historical archival materials about the lives of a variety of black trans and gender non-conforming people, each chapters veers far away from history to begin making grandiose cultural and theoretical claims.
Much of this could be forgiven were it not for one additional serious problem in Snorton's book: his prose. Falling into the trap so many academics in the humanities tend to fall into, Snorton uses unnecessarily dense and verbose prose in a way that fully obscures the meaning of much of what he is trying to say. I understand that academic writing is going to be more challenging and have an added layer of depth - but I also fully believe that academic writing should work to actively clarify itself, especially when discussing issues of some import.
A book that could have been especially interesting if it had fulfilled the mission it lays out in its title, "Black on Both Sides" fails to do the things you really want it to do: tell us the histories, long forgotten, of black trans lives.
Much of this could be forgiven were it not for one additional serious problem in Snorton's book: his prose. Falling into the trap so many academics in the humanities tend to fall into, Snorton uses unnecessarily dense and verbose prose in a way that fully obscures the meaning of much of what he is trying to say. I understand that academic writing is going to be more challenging and have an added layer of depth - but I also fully believe that academic writing should work to actively clarify itself, especially when discussing issues of some import.
A book that could have been especially interesting if it had fulfilled the mission it lays out in its title, "Black on Both Sides" fails to do the things you really want it to do: tell us the histories, long forgotten, of black trans lives.
February 18, 2019
Just an incredible book; Snorton carefully hammers home his points again and again, drawing together transness and blackness through fungibility, movement, and transversality. It's a book that is so beautifully couched in the works of women of color feminism, queer of color and trans of color critique, and it's something I'm going to be chewing on for a really long time as I think about ways to teach and also write trans history broadly. Just a magnificent book, truly.
August 2, 2020
This book was clearly well researched, I only wish it had been more meticulously edited and that the author had done more to connect the historical evidence and his conclusions.
February 9, 2018
Spotted this book as a new addition to the library's collection and thought it would be an especially topical read for Black History Month. The premise that author Snorton would explore the intersections of the histories of transness and blackness sounded really interesting. Black trans women in particular are at risk for violence and while this book is not specifically about that topic it seemed like it would be a good topical read for the moment.
Honestly, it was a difficult book to read. The book follows different paths of history, from medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women to cross-dressing for various reasons (including to escape detection). Although well-researched with lots of references, the text was too academic and unapproachable for me. This could certainly be an issue of my own unfamiliarity but I found it bizarre to see reviews who describe the writing as "beautiful". The cover also seemed misleading as a "racial history of trans identity" since the book really isn't that broad.
There is good material here and maybe it's a matter of what I needed (a more approachable/readable text) vs. what the author was trying to convey. Janet Mock's 'Redefining Realness' is a very readable book (although hers is a memoir of her own experiences vs. Snorton's book as an overview and looking at specific topics) and would recommend Mock's book instead if you haven't read it.
I'd skip this or at least take a look at it to see if it's something you'd really want to purchase or need to read.
Honestly, it was a difficult book to read. The book follows different paths of history, from medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women to cross-dressing for various reasons (including to escape detection). Although well-researched with lots of references, the text was too academic and unapproachable for me. This could certainly be an issue of my own unfamiliarity but I found it bizarre to see reviews who describe the writing as "beautiful". The cover also seemed misleading as a "racial history of trans identity" since the book really isn't that broad.
There is good material here and maybe it's a matter of what I needed (a more approachable/readable text) vs. what the author was trying to convey. Janet Mock's 'Redefining Realness' is a very readable book (although hers is a memoir of her own experiences vs. Snorton's book as an overview and looking at specific topics) and would recommend Mock's book instead if you haven't read it.
I'd skip this or at least take a look at it to see if it's something you'd really want to purchase or need to read.
August 22, 2018
This is an EXCELLENT text, a necessary contribution to trans studies, black studies, and black feminism -- it's worth the read, no matter how long it takes (it's a hard one - not just because of the depth of thought in every sentence written, which could land as dense for some readers*, but also because of the weight of the text. It's hard because it should be - reading about the ways antiblackness actually undergirds/has historically undergirded the systems of power that structure US national relationships to "gender" and "sexuality" is not something most (at least nonblack) scholars and readers, especially those coming from gender/sexuality studies, will be used to, but it's necessary. But I digress).
*This leads to my one potential critique, which is that this text might be a bit dense for folks outside of the academy, but I still think it's worth the effort/read all around. At the very least Snorton's work can lead the "average" (white) reader to canonical black feminist texts (Spillers, Lorde, etc).
*This leads to my one potential critique, which is that this text might be a bit dense for folks outside of the academy, but I still think it's worth the effort/read all around. At the very least Snorton's work can lead the "average" (white) reader to canonical black feminist texts (Spillers, Lorde, etc).
October 2, 2018
A fascinating look at how trans and racial identities intersect. Looking at specific historical events that intersect with race and trans ideas Riley Snorton unpacks how they are loaded with meaning for understand modern trans identities. A sophisticated theoretical study that at times is more obtuse than clear in its argument.
"This mode of accounting, of expressing the arithmetic violence of black and trans death, as it also refers to antilock, antiques, and anti trans forms of slow and imminent death, finds additional elaboration in what Dagmawi Woubshet refers to as a "poetics of compounding loss." viii
"...a real state of emergency occurs as a rupture in history to reveal, as Homi Bhabha has written in his forward to Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, that "the state of emergency is also always a state of emergence." ix
"Black on Both Sides is an attempt to find a vocabulary for black and trans life. In this sense, it works to do more than provide a "shadow history" of blackness in trans studies or transness in black studies." xiv
"This mode of accounting, of expressing the arithmetic violence of black and trans death, as it also refers to antilock, antiques, and anti trans forms of slow and imminent death, finds additional elaboration in what Dagmawi Woubshet refers to as a "poetics of compounding loss." viii
"...a real state of emergency occurs as a rupture in history to reveal, as Homi Bhabha has written in his forward to Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, that "the state of emergency is also always a state of emergence." ix
"Black on Both Sides is an attempt to find a vocabulary for black and trans life. In this sense, it works to do more than provide a "shadow history" of blackness in trans studies or transness in black studies." xiv
June 22, 2018
I know that this is the second book that I've rated with 5 stars today, but it really really deserves it, you have no idea. This book is so incredible. It took me almost three months to read, but it's difficult on purpose - it's really heavy subject matter, emotionally, theoretically, mentally - and in the sense that I wrote about in my BA. I feel like a lot of this text made me understand my own thesis more. Beyond being just incredibly informative on a history that is unthought on most accounts, it also is an exercise of understanding that I think has literally made me a better person for reading this. I would highly recommend this book to all my friends. A warning - a lot of this book has to, by necessity, deal with graphic depictions of violence against Black people, which can be distressing to read. However, Snorton treats each iteration with utmost care, and demonstrates clear compassion for the reader, which I really appreciated.
April 5, 2019
An extremely complex and academic book discussing the intersections of Blackness and transness by reviewing historical accounts of Black gender nonconforming and trans people, photographs, films, etc. Snorton has some amazing ideas regarding race and gender theory. However, many of the references they make are not explained and therefore to understand the book you may have to do some digging into the things they are referring to. It's very dense and can require multiple passes over a section to understand it. But overall, this is an amazing book with concepts that are really inventive.
March 11, 2020
An academic and intersectional approach to understanding our conceptions of gender in America. Snorton does an excellent job of showing us that in many ways race and gender cannot be separated but rather that our our knowledge of one only exists because of the other. While not all his theories land and sometimes it can be difficult to trace the threads between them, there is much here that is necessary learning. Be warned though, he supplies a heavy dose of philosophical language that if unfamiliar with could make the work unreadable (but if familiar with enrich the conversation greatly).
October 7, 2018
This text is an absolute must for critical engagements of race and gender in academia and beyond.
February 5, 2020
An incredible book overall. Would definitely recommend it
https://youtu.be/G4YNsDshdMI
https://youtu.be/G4YNsDshdMI
October 18, 2022
theory make my head go “ow”
February 8, 2021
Moins un livre d'histoire qui s'intéresse à la mutation des identités trans dans les deux derniers siècles qu'une réflexion philosophique et un peu sociologique assez pointue (et pour un public très motivé, ce n'est pas une lecture très facile) sur les corps noirs trans, leur perception, les discours qu'on leur tient, mais aussi ce que ces corps permettent de dire et d'affirmer comme discours et lieu de résistance et de liberté.
Dès le début de l'ouvrage, on s'intéresse à la médicalisation des corps noirs et l'histoire de cette dernière, cela donne le ton pour le restant du livre qui, sauf vers la fin, s'intéresse plus à la réflexion philosophique et à comment les discours se forment, se muent, se changent, par qui ils sont énoncés, comment ils circulent et ce que ça amène comme conséquences. Dans la première partie, on a aussi un fantastique chapitre sur comment le marronage par le travestissement que certains esclaves ont pratiqué afin d'échapper à leur poursuivant (y compris des figures de premières importantes comme Harriet Tubman) permet d'associer radicalement le travestissement à la liberté et comment les personnes noires peuvent justement trouvé une plus grande liberté encore dans ces pratiques.
Dans la deuxième partie, très courte partie, C. Riley Snorton combine une analyse littéraire de trois oeuvres américaines publiées sous une même titre en 1965: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folks et The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man et s'intéresse au genre dans ces trois oeuvres. J'avoue m'être un peu perdu dans ces parties et ne pas comprendre vraiment en quoi cela aider sa thèse principale, j'ai honnêtement plutôt décroché ici (étrangement, même s'il s'agissait d'analyse de livre alors que j'aurais dû aimé) et ne me souviens plus trop ce qu'il en ressortait d'intéressant. On dirait plus un collage d'un article universitaire dans un livre.
Dans la troisième partie, on passe du travestissement aux figures beaucoup plus trans qu'on connaît aujourd'hui. L'auteur explore les discours, à travers les journaux et procès, qui sont tenus sur plusieurs personnes trans noires aux États-Unis. On est ici beaucoup plus dans ce que je m'attendais à lire dans ce livre avec des réflexions beaucoup plus axée en fonction de certaines personnes que d'une réflexion philosophique abstraite. Le deuxième (et dernier) chapitre de la partie s'intéresse à des mouvements beaucoup plus contemporains comme BLM et l'importance de la mémoire militante et de l'héritage des personnes noires et trans assassinées. Une réflexion intéressante et importante sur le deuil, la commémoration et la célébration qui conclut habilement un ouvrage sur l'histoire des identités trans et noires.
Bref, un ouvrage définitivement intéressant à plusieurs égards, mais l'inégalité du contenu et la portée philosophique peut définitivement décourager une partie de son lectorat potentiel, voir le perdre complètement (comme ce qui m'est arrivé dans la deuxième partie).
Dès le début de l'ouvrage, on s'intéresse à la médicalisation des corps noirs et l'histoire de cette dernière, cela donne le ton pour le restant du livre qui, sauf vers la fin, s'intéresse plus à la réflexion philosophique et à comment les discours se forment, se muent, se changent, par qui ils sont énoncés, comment ils circulent et ce que ça amène comme conséquences. Dans la première partie, on a aussi un fantastique chapitre sur comment le marronage par le travestissement que certains esclaves ont pratiqué afin d'échapper à leur poursuivant (y compris des figures de premières importantes comme Harriet Tubman) permet d'associer radicalement le travestissement à la liberté et comment les personnes noires peuvent justement trouvé une plus grande liberté encore dans ces pratiques.
Dans la deuxième partie, très courte partie, C. Riley Snorton combine une analyse littéraire de trois oeuvres américaines publiées sous une même titre en 1965: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folks et The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man et s'intéresse au genre dans ces trois oeuvres. J'avoue m'être un peu perdu dans ces parties et ne pas comprendre vraiment en quoi cela aider sa thèse principale, j'ai honnêtement plutôt décroché ici (étrangement, même s'il s'agissait d'analyse de livre alors que j'aurais dû aimé) et ne me souviens plus trop ce qu'il en ressortait d'intéressant. On dirait plus un collage d'un article universitaire dans un livre.
Dans la troisième partie, on passe du travestissement aux figures beaucoup plus trans qu'on connaît aujourd'hui. L'auteur explore les discours, à travers les journaux et procès, qui sont tenus sur plusieurs personnes trans noires aux États-Unis. On est ici beaucoup plus dans ce que je m'attendais à lire dans ce livre avec des réflexions beaucoup plus axée en fonction de certaines personnes que d'une réflexion philosophique abstraite. Le deuxième (et dernier) chapitre de la partie s'intéresse à des mouvements beaucoup plus contemporains comme BLM et l'importance de la mémoire militante et de l'héritage des personnes noires et trans assassinées. Une réflexion intéressante et importante sur le deuil, la commémoration et la célébration qui conclut habilement un ouvrage sur l'histoire des identités trans et noires.
Bref, un ouvrage définitivement intéressant à plusieurs égards, mais l'inégalité du contenu et la portée philosophique peut définitivement décourager une partie de son lectorat potentiel, voir le perdre complètement (comme ce qui m'est arrivé dans la deuxième partie).
May 5, 2022
[Ellen Craft, on dressing as a man to escape with her husband from American slavery] “I had much rather starve in England, a free woman, than be a slave for the best man that ever breathed upon the American continent.” Here, the syntax belies gender’s forms, as Ellen explicates the corollary between freedom and womanhood, which is to suggest not that women did not face gendered oppression but that the ontology of gender required freedom as its prerequisite.
In the first few chapters, Snorton writes on the historic origins of gynaecology as one premised on the experimentation on Black chattel women, exploring how invasive and dehumanizing surgeries reduced Black women to flesh instead of gendered bodies.
He also explores how “fungibility and fugitivity figured two sides of a Janus-faced coin, in which the same logic that figured blackness as immanently interchangeable would also engender its flow” (121), in the escape strategies used by enslaved persons. In other chapters, Snorton examines the narrative of the Black Mother in Black literary classics, and in the last chapter he does a close-reading of Phillip DeVine’s life (for those unfamiliar, DeVine’s murder is the one whitewashed and immortalises in Boys Don’t Cry (1999). Found the close reading a little weird, but tbf Snorton himself acknowledges that it’s a bit over the top, so, okay.)
The theoretical language can be a little dense at times, but it was a startling book in its revelations, on the idea of the historic fungibility of gender/ the Black body for chattel persons. I’m neither American nor Black, so this was a very good introduction to African American studies, and what that might look like with a trans lens. Caveat that I listened to this as an audiobook and did not read it cover-to-cover, so I probably am more familiar with some chapters than others. A very good book overall.
In the first few chapters, Snorton writes on the historic origins of gynaecology as one premised on the experimentation on Black chattel women, exploring how invasive and dehumanizing surgeries reduced Black women to flesh instead of gendered bodies.
He also explores how “fungibility and fugitivity figured two sides of a Janus-faced coin, in which the same logic that figured blackness as immanently interchangeable would also engender its flow” (121), in the escape strategies used by enslaved persons. In other chapters, Snorton examines the narrative of the Black Mother in Black literary classics, and in the last chapter he does a close-reading of Phillip DeVine’s life (for those unfamiliar, DeVine’s murder is the one whitewashed and immortalises in Boys Don’t Cry (1999). Found the close reading a little weird, but tbf Snorton himself acknowledges that it’s a bit over the top, so, okay.)
The theoretical language can be a little dense at times, but it was a startling book in its revelations, on the idea of the historic fungibility of gender/ the Black body for chattel persons. I’m neither American nor Black, so this was a very good introduction to African American studies, and what that might look like with a trans lens. Caveat that I listened to this as an audiobook and did not read it cover-to-cover, so I probably am more familiar with some chapters than others. A very good book overall.
October 24, 2020
I will come back to read more intermittently. The book is very academic and can get dense in the theory, which I am not always up to the task of reading.
The first chapter gives a very in depth history of the field of gynecology and the doctor from the 1800s who abused enslaved women for the sake of promoting himself and his research. This history was all the richer because Snorton includes details about the impact of this doctor and the legacy of his experiments on American material culture in the decades that follow.
The first chapter gives a very in depth history of the field of gynecology and the doctor from the 1800s who abused enslaved women for the sake of promoting himself and his research. This history was all the richer because Snorton includes details about the impact of this doctor and the legacy of his experiments on American material culture in the decades that follow.
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February 28, 2021[DNF] I really wanted to like this book. The topic is so important and genuinely fascinating. However, the discussions of medical abuse were very triggering for me and the writing was a disappointment. I love critical theory. I'm an academic and I've taken some gender studies classes in my day. When I say that this book was written in such opaque prose that I hardly believed the author knew what they were saying, that's really saying something. Normally, by the end of long academic sentences you realize what the point of the first part of the sentence was. This book was not like that. I really wanted to enjoy this more and I think learning about Black trans lives is so essential, this just wasn't the book for me.
May 27, 2021
3.5
this was weird as fuck. i actually didn't understand most of the first part (what the hell was that). although it's probably because i'm dumb and not the best at focusing on school rn. however, the last two chapters were great, so at least i got something out of this.
i read this for a school project for which i got to choose the topic, so to an extent this was 'voluntary'. also, i'd say i would have probably picked this up eventually even for pleasure... but my rating would have been the same: not what i was expecting, but could've been worse
this was weird as fuck. i actually didn't understand most of the first part (what the hell was that). although it's probably because i'm dumb and not the best at focusing on school rn. however, the last two chapters were great, so at least i got something out of this.
i read this for a school project for which i got to choose the topic, so to an extent this was 'voluntary'. also, i'd say i would have probably picked this up eventually even for pleasure... but my rating would have been the same: not what i was expecting, but could've been worse
January 17, 2023
CW: racism, homo/transphobia, ableism, medical content/trauma/experimentation, death, colonization, slavery, sexism
a book full of extremely useful & important information about the history of black & trans bodies. clearly very well researched and presented. it does read very dry/textbook-like which can make it hard to read straight through as a non-scholar, but knowing that going in helps. I, personally, took breaks while reading.
if you have interest in this topic or a wish to be more informed, I highly recommend.
a book full of extremely useful & important information about the history of black & trans bodies. clearly very well researched and presented. it does read very dry/textbook-like which can make it hard to read straight through as a non-scholar, but knowing that going in helps. I, personally, took breaks while reading.
if you have interest in this topic or a wish to be more informed, I highly recommend.
June 8, 2020
Wow this book was amazing and I was crying by the end. I am going to have to reread parts of it because I skimmed since I want to use it for some specific research also my brain is very tired right now. But. I look forward to a reread and also was happy to read Snorton's thoughts on some big gender publications.
February 3, 2021
Brilliant theoretical work; I’m sure I only understood a fraction—the densely academic/poetic style packs in a lot of meaning—but this is worth the read, nonetheless.
December 21, 2022
Some interesting history but also very theory focused.
August 26, 2021
Very useful ideas, facts, theories, interpretation s.. Powerfully written; sometimes a bit more dense with professional academic language than my brain was up for.
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