Trans women have the same exact shit that everybody else in the world has who isn’t white, het, male, able-bodied or otherwise privileged. I love Nevada for the way it allows transness to be boring, funny, and imperfect yet free of melodrama or self-seriousness, despite the undeniably painful subject matter. Or something? But Maria is like, dude, hi.īeing queer is, like being a human being, often mundane, and yet impossible to essentialize. People tend to assume that trans women are either drag queens and loads of trashy fun, or else sad, pathetic and deluded pervy straight men-at least, until they save up their money and get their Sex Change Operations, at which point they become just like every other woman. I love Maria for so many reasons, mainly because she is simply over it, and her narration–sardonic, cynical, unpredictably poignant–is at its best when digging into what it’s like to actually be trans, from her point of view: This is literally the first three pages of the book. Nevada’s opening pages sum up everything that makes it so special: it’s a sex scene that finds our disaffected narrator, Maria, being choked by her girlfriend, Steph, as she disassociates and neurotically contemplates the perils of domestic life, her frustration with her genitals, and the right way to fake an orgasm. I encountered the novel in 2018 on the recommendation of Torrey Peters and was captivated from the first page, which is excerpted here along with the novel’s first three chapters.

Since then, despite going out of print, worn copies of its iconic orange cover have been passed, and lost, between thousands of friends, lovers, and frenemies. Originally published in 2013 by the brilliant, and now-shuttered, Topside Press, Nevada shattered whatever expectation of what trans literature “ought” to do.

For a disproportionate amount of my trans friends, it’s Imogen Binnie’s Nevada. For me, it was James Baldwin’s explanation of the significance of eye contact between queer men in Giovanni’s Room and Jonathan Groff attempting to prepare for gay sex in an episode of Looking (I know, leave me alone). It can be both deeply unnerving and extremely affirming, a recognition of being included in a community bound by shared experience beyond rainbow flags. Most queer people remember the moment, or moments, they first experienced a piece of art that accurately, and honestly, reflected their own life back at them.

Nevada by Imogen Binnie