This is about how humans create stories other humans like, and there are no real bounds around that other than checking out the story and finding out if you are its audience, a thing you, the reader, decide.
It was prompted by reading the excellent essay How To Read A Trans Fem Writer - Kai Cheng Thom. It’s much smarter than I am, I’m just here to say that I’m among the audience for these books, why that’s not surprising, and why others like me shouldn’t be surprised that they like these books.
When I picked up a book I believed to be about dragon riders in an alternate history India and a woman who gets hers back, I knew that I liked dragons, adventures, historical settings, and a good love story. When I found - quite immediately, like any other novel it isn’t coy about about wanting us to know who the main character is - that the main character is trans, my middle-aged white male brain popped up two notifications:
- Hey pay attention to the representation of the heroine and all these other trans women that’s not a thing you have much experience with reading you could learn something
- Hey is the author a trans woman and/or Indian? Is this a story leveraging lived experience along with the research? Find out. (A: Lived experience)
This was Alina Boyden’s Stealing Thunder.
How To Read A Trans Fem Writer mentions feedback on books by trans fem authors from straight, white males who were surprised to enjoy a story written by a trans fem woman. My message to straight white males who like fantasy and sci-fi is to read fantasy and sci-fi novels where a character (or more) is trans. If you’re thinking that because there’s a trans character the book is going to be an eat-your-vegetables morality play, I encourage you to notice the presumption and push it aside with focusing on there being a dragon/spaceship/airship/sword/hot chick on the cover and wading in, because it definitely isn’t what you’re worried it is.
‘Cause just like Dudes talk about The Classics many of us my age read in our youth, these are works that will expand your horizons to the limit of your imagination and beyond. You’ll be asked to think about what freedom truly means, what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land*, to go along on a journey of swashbuckling self-discovery, and all those things you loved in those other stories.
And yes, as a fellow White man I think you should seek out trans authors, and authors of color, and international authors because they all are writing things that you literally cannot imagine - because our imaginations are bounded by our experiences which include the ideas introduced to us in our fiction diets which if they all orbit around a certain set of worlds do not contain some of the concepts not shared with unknown worlds - and they are fucking great.
Enjoy!
* maaaaan, this did NOT hold up to a re-read as a more seasoned adult.