TRANS: A Memoir - Hardcover

Juliet Jacques

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1784781649 ISBN 13: 9781784781644

Publisher: Verso Books, 2015

Synopsis

In July 2012, aged thirty, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery and felt for the first time that her body matched the person she felt she had been since childhood. Through university and then in a series of dead end clerical jobs, Jacques felt out of place with her surroundings, and with who she really was. Living in Brighton, trying to launch a career as a writer, she navigates the hostilities and misunderstandings of growing up in a time where the mainstream media - and even feminism - fail to acknowledge transgender identity. Yet through films, music, politics and football she begins to find herself, and starts the process of transition, and life beyond. Through her memoir, Jacques interweaves the narrative with powerful explorations of many of the major debates surrounding trans: the uses of life writing, the relationship with feminism, and the before and after images that illustrated so many articles and documentaries. Brilliantly written, revealing and honest, Trans also includes an epilogue with award-winning author Sheila Heti, in which Jacques and Heti discuss the issues facing transgender people.

About this title

Review:

“Brave and moving, Trans is necessary reading for anyone who cares about gender, power, freedom and desire. Juliet Jacques deals with the forces of cruelty and ignorance with a hard-won clarity and calm. A vital voice in our turbulent times.” – Olivia Laing, author of The Trip to Echo Spring

“Trans is a marvelously nuanced journey through gender, brilliantly contextualized in the disparate worlds of pop culture, football, mass media, and the NHS. This is a terrific read by an accomplished author.” – Kate Bornstein, author of A Queer and Pleasant Danger

“I Am Cait for the literary set. Jacques lays her transitioning experience bare – hormones and surgery and all – with an afterword by Sheila Heti.” – New York Magazine

“Brutally honest and funny.” – Marie Claire

“Jacques is trapped in the wrong narrative, and Trans offers the possibility of a more complete one, with a holistic personal story that does not reject pre-transition identity, and an understanding that gender lies on a continuum...the most sublime moments in Trans come when Jacques shares with us a vision she has gained — and often these are hard-won — into what it means to have a unified self, whether it’s when she receives recognition from her parents for her success, has a great day on the soccer field, or simply feels good in her skin.” – Amanda DeMarco, Flavorwire

"Juliet Jacques has a funny, ruthlessly honest voice that readers will dig." - Book Riot

"An honest, articulate account of one life so far" - Guardian
“Trans challenges us all, no matter what our gender or sexuality. Ultimately, it makes us look at our selves, and wonder what price we pay for the identities we assume, or which we have thrust upon us.” Philip Hoare, New Statesman

"As dedicated to educating the ignorant public as Jacques is, she’s also committed to a narrative that nurtures people who share her experiences, and her writing is free of sanitized, after-school-special, feel-good endings...A hybrid memoir that offers alternative conversations to disarm and dismantle a hostile, antagonistic, and often violent cultural climate towards transgender individuals." Vanessa Willoughby, Mask Magazine

"Powerful and engaging. . . it’s hard not to see her as anything other than brave, even as she pushes readers to recognize that what is revolutionary is the very ordinariness of her day-to-day life.” – New York Times


“[Jacques’s] storytelling is clear-eyed and evocative.” Cat Fitzpatrick, Lambda Literary

“Trans is about what it’s like to be an outsider, about the difficult interplay between gender variance and social acceptance[...] In making herself vulnerable, Jacques shows how likeable she is. At the end of the book I wanted to be her friend, and you will too.” Ray Filar, New Humanist

“Juliet Jacques’s Trans ... provides a lyrical exploration of her own gender journey against the background of increasing media interest in transgender issues. Thoughtful and intimate, it’s a fine successor to books such as Jan Morris’s Conundrum.” Helen Lewis, Guardian, Best Politics Books of the Year

“Trans: A Memoir is an inherently fascinating read and one of those intensely personal stories that will linger in the mind and memory long after the autobiography is finished and set back upon the shelf.” – Midwest Book Review



“[Jacques] has a Proustian rhythm and pace. Her evenness of voice, when discussing personal and emotional detail of the very intense and difficult parts of her life let the viewer share a comfortable intimacy with her, that I can only imagine was difficult to balance while maintaining a sense of self and privacy...[Trans] is a history as well as a personal history.” – Seattle Review of Books

“Trans broadens the growing genre of trans literature in its portrayal of medical and social transition as a means of achieving personal congruity rather than ostensible womanhood. This makes it an important contribution to transgender literature...Where Trans breaks new ground is in the complexity of its narrator and her willingness to take a brutally honest look at her motives and attitudes throughout the process.” – Kate Sosin Oeser, The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review

About the Author:

JULIET JACQUES is a freelance author, best known for writing A Transgender Journey for The Guardian, the first time the gender reassignment process has been serialized for a major British publication and was long listed for the Orwell Prize in 2011. She was included in the Independent's Pink List for 2012, is a regular blogger for New Statesman, and has written for Time Out, London Magazine, Cineaste, Vertigo, 3am, and Blizzard, among many others.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1784781649
• ISBN 13: 9781784781644
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320