“By a Trans Woman, About Trans Women, For Trans Readers.” On Imogen Binnie’s Nevada

I was just beginning to think of myself as a writer when I encountered Toni Morrison’s conversation with Charlie Rose, in which she spoke about the importance of African literature in the early development of her own writing career. She spoke of a visceral response she’d had to Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, and about how when she first read his work, she’d understood from his language that he was not writing towards a white reader. It would have been inconceivable for a Nigerian writer to think, first, of a white reader. In this way, the work of African writers had been central in her own development. In America, she lamented, she often knew to whom Black writers were writing—and it wasn’t her. Morrison’s classic example?

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison.

“Invisible to whom?” she countered.

Nevada, by Imogen Binnie, occupies a similar place in my own literary imagination. Quietly published in 2013, it follows Maria Griffiths, a trans woman who lives in Brooklyn, and is prompted by a breakup and the loss of her job to hit the road and drive to the west coast. While traveling she meets James, who works at Walmart, who is questioning his gender. Maria immediately recognizes him as such, largely because she sees herself in him. Sight—or perhaps vision is a better word—is at work in this novel a great deal.

Nevada is a novel that was written by a trans woman, about trans women, for trans readers.

So many narratives around the trans experience are stories of light and shadow, of moving in darkness and secrecy. There can, at times, be an almost vampiric quality about this hidden-ness. Much like vampires avoid sunlight for their health, darkness, in turn, represents a safe haven. Protection is an inherent part of invisibility. But the truth is that as trans people, we have always seen each other. There can be no darkness where our gaze lands. James cannot hide from Maria because he is seen and known.

And this remains true for all of Nevada. It’s a novel about everything coming to light, being seen. From the chaos that upends Maria’s relationship at the outset, to conversations had between Maria and James about the ways in which trans identity makes itself manifest. I mean, truly, in this novel, the discourse discourses. In discussing the controversial practices of gender psychologists J. Michael Bailey to Kenneth Zucker, the argument can be made that there are conversations happening in these pages that should not happen in mixed company.

What that means is this: It’s right there on the page, the fact of it. Nevada is a novel that was written by a trans woman, about trans women, for trans readers. It’s in the discourse, it’s in the plot, it’s in the vision of the book. It’s in the way this novel focuses on everything that is seen, rather than unseen. When I first read the novel, before I transitioned, I felt as though I was looking through a window into an experience I couldn’t quite fathom. Having reread it, post transition, I know that I am in on the joke.

What a feeling that is, when you open a book for the first time, and you can tell that you are its intended audience. You are the reader that book was written for. It feels like a gift of the most authentic sort—the gift of being seen and known by someone you don’t even know.