A review by becleighton
The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard, by Tom Léger
2.0
This was an incredibly uneven anthology, and I was a bit surprised at how dreadful so much of it was considering Topside Press's stellar later record.
There are some I really enjoyed: Imogen Binnie and Casey Plett (of course), Ryka Aoki, Red Durkin, Riley Calais Harris, Cyd Nova, and others in which it was just nice to see some decent representation if it wasn't spectacular. Generally, the stuff by trans women was pretty decent.
But so much of this was just an odd insight into some collective trans dude id: trans dudes with names like "Kant" talking to cis women they call things like "Pussy Chick" (I'm not even making this up), and a wider array of anxious transmasculine Jock Halberslam-esque Lost Boy crap featuring unintentionally terrible characters than I thought I'd ever see in one place. It also could have done with a little less poorly-contextualised experimental work from all sides, from which the second half in particular really suffered.
It was an interesting read and I'm glad that I did read it because there's such a shortage of fiction by trans people, but it meant reading an awful lot of dreck for the gems in the midst of it.
There are some I really enjoyed: Imogen Binnie and Casey Plett (of course), Ryka Aoki, Red Durkin, Riley Calais Harris, Cyd Nova, and others in which it was just nice to see some decent representation if it wasn't spectacular. Generally, the stuff by trans women was pretty decent.
But so much of this was just an odd insight into some collective trans dude id: trans dudes with names like "Kant" talking to cis women they call things like "Pussy Chick" (I'm not even making this up), and a wider array of anxious transmasculine Jock Halberslam-esque Lost Boy crap featuring unintentionally terrible characters than I thought I'd ever see in one place. It also could have done with a little less poorly-contextualised experimental work from all sides, from which the second half in particular really suffered.
It was an interesting read and I'm glad that I did read it because there's such a shortage of fiction by trans people, but it meant reading an awful lot of dreck for the gems in the midst of it.