2023-08-26 23:46:35
Snow chopper
Picador
“Nevada” by Imogen Binnie originally appeared in 2013, before a re-release in 2022.
LITERATURE – We had to wait ten years, but that’s it. Here we are. A new novel – cult since its release in the United States in 2013 – is filling the shelves of our French bookstores: Nevadathe first novel by the American writer Imogen Binnie, was published this Thursday August 24 in the language of Molière by Gallimard.
Her story is that of Maria Griffiths, a New Yorker in her twenties who is a little lost. Originally from a small corner of Pennsylvania, Maria has freed herself from the body assigned to her birth since she is a citizen of the Big Apple. And even as her transition is behind her, Maria isn’t blossoming much. His work as a bookseller bores him. The relationship with his girlfriend, too.
Maria wants to put her life in order, but she can’t. Then one fine day, she gets fired and dumped in stride. Things are scrambling. Maria steals her ex’s car and decides to drive. Head West to try to find meaning in his life.
Nevada is as catchy as a road movie, marked here by the cynical punchlines of its heroine. ” Oh Williamsburg. There was a time when you seemed like a tough and scary neighborhood, but now it’s clear that the graffiti on your walls was drawn by art students. “, she loose in the first pages.
Make-up, estrogen injection, cost of civil status changes… Maria tells us about her troubles, but also about her daily life as a penniless trans woman. His thoughts are enlightening. ” You have to be able to prove that you’re totally normal and straight and not at all queer to be allowed to transition into a normal straight woman who doesn’t freak anyone out. she observes, for example, in one of her long discussions with herself.
Why Imogen Binnie doesn’t talk about transitioning
Behind this character character, there is an author: Imogen Binnie. Notably known for her short stories, the writer has more than one thing in common with her heroine. Like her, she began her transition when she arrived in New York. Like her, she trusts no one, doesn’t have much hope in humanity and prefers to assume ” that everyone sucks and doesn’t know how to behave around trans women in her words in a note that accompanied her novel’s 2022 reissue.
Nevada is not the first fiction to feature a trans character. We think in particular of Orlando de Virginia Woolf, Stone Butch Blues de Leslie Feinberg et Choir Boy the Charlie Jane Anders.
What is notable here is that Imogen Binnie’s novel does not speak of transition. ” Because this mysterious middle phase is the most exciting thing for people who don’t have to experience it, I’ve decided to remove it.”, explains the author. His goal: to emancipate himself from the “cisnormative” gaze.
His next book on Kurt Cobain?
When it was first published in 2013, his novel marked the press. ” Successful and important book “, according to The Atlanticit’s a ” wonderful rereading of road trip literature », pour Vogue.
Ten years later, it became cult and transformed the LGBT+ literary landscape, according to the New Yorker. It’s a “ book about leaving, about rejection, about saying ‘no’ and especially ‘no’ to the standard narrative in which, before the transition, we are all suicidal and, after the transition, we are all perfectly inseparable from cisgender people, unless they have become cursed sex workers “, writes the author of the article. Before adding: Nevada is not only written by one of us, it was also written for us. »
Since then, Imogen Binnie has been contacted by the teams of Transparent – series about a father decided to make his transition – but refused. She collaborated on the writing of a handful of other series, such as Doubt with Laverne Cox, Council of Dads et Cruel Summer. The website Vulture says she’s mostly focused on polishing her next novel. It would be about a theory defended by some Nirvana fans: Kurt Cobain would have been a trans woman.
See also on Le HuffPost :
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