Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - Τρομπέτα

Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

Τρομπέτα by Jackie Kay

35 reviews

hazioli's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

I am deeply disappointed in this book - I felt an echo of what Kay was attempting. I did really enjoy what she described as the 'jazz like' structure and the way memories and letters and articles were interspersed into streams of consciousness from the so many people and sources. And some of the characters did have beautiful development - I loved every bit from Millie's perspective; the way Kay depicted her grief and her love, was beautiful and made clear the extent of love Kay herself must have felt in her life. But while I could sense the motive and potential behind many other characters and the the journey the book followed them through - almost all other perspectives made me feel sick.

This is an important book to have been written, and an amazing (fictional) life to be attempting to capture - and I'm sure much of the depiction, and language, and hate is authentic and true to the mid/late nineties. But it was also so wrong, and so unkind, and did so little justice to the beauty of being transgender - to the beauty inherent in any person's life.

After finishing this book, I was not at all surprised to read (in a 20th anniversary interview at the back of my copy) that Jackie Kay '.. didn't want to rely on research'. Even in that 2016 interview her references to trans people is messy and misinformed. The book doesn't have too glaring a falsity, but it cries out as being written by someone who had not truly connected in any way to the vibrant community she wrote about.
It is clear Kay wanted to tell a story full of heart and soul and humanity in a 'unique' story but she is (in regard to her writing this book) no better than the sensationalist author she depicts, who is so clearly depicted as a bad and person. If you wish to write in such an unbalanced way, depicting far more vile hatred and speculation from other characters, chapter after chapter of graphic transphobia, the least you could do is afford some space to the feelings of the character who is degraded and defiled by their words. This book read like a 300 page 'outing' article carving itself a path that avoids the motives and feelings and life of the transgender person it discusses as much as possible to focus on almost any one else's opinion of him. This could be one massive structural feat to make this point about the journalists books and the transgender position in society - but I don't believe her capable of offering trans people that dignity after reading this.

What gives you, Jackie Kay, who is not transgender, who does not even seem to have had a conversation with a transgender person before writing this - what gives you the right to document my suffering like this?

How cruel it seems, when thought of abstractly, to write one of the first popular novels about a black trans man and to offer so little to his own story and feelings in a time when most people, LGB or not, were more than ready to spew the same filth as the characters of this book.

2.5 stars because Millie's chapters were nonetheless the beautiful and I relished, when I could, in this account of a monumental love and her complete disregard for her husband's secret.

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chloe_hazel's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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careinthelibrary's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Brilliant character study but the writing held me at a distance emotionally.

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emilyada11's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad

Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

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victorsbookshelf's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

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temi1008's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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smushleigh's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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jem_carstairs's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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camillatd's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced

3.0

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Trumpet is undoubtedly good literature, but is it a good trans story? I would argue it maybe… isn’t a trans story at all. It’s a story about a trans person who is completely decentered from their own story, their own narrative. It’s about the stories that cis people tel themselves and others about this trans person, this man, after he’s gone. I raise an eyebrow at Jackie Kay’s claim of little research—I wonder, did she speak to trans people, trans men, while writing this book? I know it was the nineties—and I don’t discredit how groundbreaking this book was. Doubly, triply so for a Black lesbian writer writing the story of a Black trans man. I understand not wanting to write Joss’ perspective (almost at all)—it’s not the story at hand here, and it’s not Jackie’s voice. But that does leave me wanting—I envision more queer stories and queer futures in literature, more trans voices and writers and lives. Trans stories with trans people front and center, alive and complicated and full of life.

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serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

The trumpet player at the heart of Trumpet is Joss Moody, a Black jazz musician. The novel opens with his wife Millie grieving his death. And what a devastating, poignant bittersweet chapter that was. I don’t think I’ve read grief written better or more lovingly, nor felt it more viscerally. Unfortunately Millie is not able to grieve in peace because Joss’s death has revealed a secret that shocked many (but not Millie who has long known about it ) and a tabloid journalist is determined to write a tell-all expose. Joss and Millie’s son Colman, shocked by the revelation and upset by its nature, is assisting her. I love that we heard from multiple voices during the novel. Each revealed more about Joss as a person and traversed different attitudes to his secret, attitudes that revealed far more about them than they did about Joss. The characterisation was excellent. Both Colman’s story arc and the final chapter, a letter written by Joss, were satisfying. This is a story about the love between a man and his wife, and between father and son. It’s the story of a man who chose to live life his authentically, despite some costs. Its exploration of issues surrounding tabloid journalism and the public’s obsession with the private lives of public figures was thought provoking and timely.

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