Tag
Transgender
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Is the Cis Literary World Okay?
Contemporary trans literature is thriving in a highly freewheeling manner… How revealing, then, that David Brooks recently suggested that literary fiction has been declining in quality.
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Paris Doesn’t Always Have To Be Burning
The documentary “Paris Is Burning” obscured the ordinary lives of queer people of color, but new footage reveals how the film could have been different.
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Saboteurs in the Modern Academy
What hope remains for the masses of disillusioned graduate students, unemployed PhDs, and embittered faculty who still, despite everything, believe in …
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Virtual Roundtable on Engaged Scholarship and Teaching
With political divisiveness and gaps in access to higher education intensifying, the imperative for universities to interact meaningfully with local and global communities has perhaps never been greater …
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Trans Like Us
When Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender in 2015, many commentators praised her bravery for claiming a truth that had been denied her at birth. At roughly the same moment, the story of Rachel Dolezal, the 37-year-old …
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Taking a Nine-Year-Old to See “The Danish Girl”
I decided about a year ago, when my younger child turned eight, that Pixar and I were calling it quits. Don’t get me wrong, Up and Toy Story were great, but given the choice between a real movie and a formulaic narrative involving fauna with catch phrases, I am a grown-up and prefer the former.…
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Wolves at the Door?
In the past month we’ve seen two different versions of the same phobic imaginative scenario. In it, a precious and vulnerable space, a space that must be protected, is invaded by an imposter, one in disguise, one who takes advantage of liberal sentimentality to enter under false pretenses and do terrible harm. According to the…
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When Art Disrupts Life
Since its debut at last year’s Sundance festival, the raucous, gorgeous new feature Tangerine has received plenty of well-deserved praise. It has been called, alternately, a “triumph,” “remarkable,” a “small wonder,” and a “minor miracle.” And yet beneath many of those accolades seems to run a thin current of condescension, a reluctance to take the film completely seriously. The…
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Virtual Roundtable on “Transparent”
Jill Soloway’s original program Transparent abounds with firsts: the first TV series to feature a transgender character as its protagonist; the first transgender-themed series to win Golden Globe …
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The Body Always Remembers
In a recent article in the Atlantic, Leslie Jamison discusses the memoirist’s responsibility to investigate the events of his or her past on the page rather than merely confess to them.1 She writes, “This notion of investigation offers an alternative to confession … To put the ‘I’ to work this way invites a different intimacy—not…
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Virtual Roundtable on “Orange Is the New Black”
In advance of the second season of Netflix’s original series, Orange Is the New Black, which will be released on Friday, June 6, we asked Public Books contributors to share their views on the show’s representation of race, gender, sexuality, incarceration, and the women-in-prison genre. —Heather Love: Made For TV —Megan Comfort: The Two Pipers…
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Dudes, Bodies, and Criminals
For those accustomed to the dry wit of judicial opinions, there is an undeniable charm to a novel that, within its first ten pages, paraphrases the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona US Supreme Court case with colloquial gusto: “The ACLU grabbed the case and 976 days later they were in front of the court that never…
