“What is the relationship between trans studies and trans life? Between our endless (generative, inane) theorizing about Gender (and our genders) and the erotic, spiritual, psychic work of becoming, of taking up an other form? ‘Is anything like a life on the other side?’ Certainly, these questions cannot be answered with any finality, but Crystal Odelle has given them a thorough, playful, and deadly serious working over. Irreverent and sharp, searching and tender, riotous and resigned, Odelle’s Trans Studies emerges adjacent to (literally, in the office of) Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and moves brilliantly, ambivalently through the maddening discourses that saturate trans feminine experience toward something like a life.”
—Cameron Awkward-Rich, author of Dispatch and The Terrible We
… ONCE UPON AN AMAB DAY
DREAM TOMORROW
I’M ALREADY BORED W/ GENDER
TRULY WELL
MEANING HI
HOW ARE YOU GORG
“With Trans Studies, Crystal Odelle has created a deeply intimate, razor sharp, and often laugh-out-loud tapestry of gender and sexuality. Odelle takes us from the community of a trans femme meetup group, to intrusive thoughts that enter her mind on dates, to Audre Lorde, The Matrix, and beyond, inviting readers to witness all the contours of her nuanced story, as well as to interrogate their own. I couldn’t get enough of her voice, which traverses from playful, tender, and biting with elegance and wit. Trans Studies leans into the complicated messiness of being human. Odelle is a writer to watch.”
—Edgar Gomez, author of High-Risk Homosexual
“Intimate, cutting with both pleasure and ache. Odelle’s writing in Trans Studies reveals the tautologies of gender, the ephemerality of identity, the bright joys and jagged glass edges of trans femme lesbian life. Reading her poetry feels like being in community.”
—micha cárdenas, artist and author of Atoms Never Touch and Poetic Operations
