NNRM #10: Detransition, Baby

by Torrey Peters

The first time I heard of this book, it was recommended to me by a trans girl that lived in the building as me. I attempted to read it, but completely bounced off. The second go around, several months later, I managed to power through.

This book is unflinchingly, overwhelmingly white. It is technically well written, but it is written in the register of gentile respectability - one that doesn't leave space for someone like me. Not every book needs to be for every person, and this one really wasn't for me.

After a decade, it's hard to recall whether my precise feelings on Nevada, but that novel definitely didn't irk me nearly as this one. I suspect that something about myself, or my material conditions has changed. Or maybe, it hasn't changed. And really, what I'm feeling is a kind of envy and frustration as other groups are allowed to move forward. Maybe.

There's much work to do to interrogate myself, but in the same sense as a person bleeding out doesn't give a shit if you use the purple surgical gloves or the blue surgical gloves, I find it impossible to give a shit about the minutiae about these specific hypothetical white people.

Maybe another re-read of this book will give me a new perspective, but I have no interest in engaging in that any time soon. And that has to mean something, doesn't it?

This is a book by a white person, for white people, and I am not a white person.

2/5

Ebook, paperback, and audiobooks available from Penguin Random House.