I feel like „Trans. A memoir” by Juliet Jaques is the sort of book the UK needed on trans issues: very politically localized, very much about every-day issues, both personal and theoretical, with pretty good descriptions about the complications that arise with the NHS and the workplace when transitioning. I like how Jaques re-frames the discussion around being “born in the wrong body” to being born in a broken society, how she pays attention to the structural violence she is facing - not only street harassment, but epistemic silencing and withdrawal/loss of material resources in this economic system that doesn’t allow the time, nor the support, for transitioning. It’s crucial that she devoted so much space to talk about the workplace, about which cities/places/jobs made it possible for her to explore her queer identity, and about changing/looking for jobs while transitioning. I also enjoyed the theoretical chapters, sometimes more than the personal ones. It’s a good book for people not familiar with trans issues, and it talks a lot about how culture builds us up, the books and the films that shaped her understanding of gender, transness and herself. She also delves into what it means to write in this age, online and especially as a marginalized person, how hard it is to hold the pressure of “representing” all of your community - an impossible task, of course. Both engaging and dis-engaging are difficult, but must be sometimes done, either to provide a point of view that didn’t exist in the public space before, or to take care of one’s mental health. The book ends with an interview, which was a nice touch - somewhere within it Jaques mentioned wanting to be more experimental in form, but not being able due to marketing within the memoir genre. That’s pretty lousy, and while unfortunately, it is part of being published under capitalism, I would have liked to read the book Jaques actually wanted to write.

I didn’t find the book always super-engaging since I couldn’t relate to many of the musical references and to the UK political climate, but I’m glad it exists.