Trans: A Memoir - Softcover

Jacques, Juliet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784781673 ISBN 13: 9781784781675

Publisher: Verso, 2016

Synopsis

An extraordinary memoir of transition and transgender politics and culture

“Six weeks before sex reassignment surgery (SRS), I am obliged to stop taking my hormones. I suddenly feel very differently about my forthcoming operation.”

In July 2012, aged thirty, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery—a process she chronicled with unflinching honesty in a serialised national newspaper column. Trans tells of her life to the present moment: a story of growing up, of defining yourself, and of the rapidly changing world of gender politics.

Fresh from university, eager to escape a dead-end job, she launches a career as a writer in a publishing culture dominated by London cliques and still figuring out the impact of the Internet. She navigates the treacherous waters of a world where, even in the liberal and feminist media, transgender identities go unacknowledged, misunderstood or worse. Yet through art, film, music, politics and football, Jacques starts to become the person she had only imagined, and begins the process of transition. Interweaving the personal with the political, her memoir is a powerful exploration of debates that comprise trans politics, issues which promise to redefine our understanding of what it means to be alive.

Revealing, honest, humorous, and self-deprecating, Trans includes an epilogue with Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?, in which Jacques and Heti discuss the cruxes of writing and identity.

About this title

About the Author

Juliet Jacques is a freelance writer, best known for the Guardian’s “Transgender Journey”—the first time the gender reassignment process had been serialised for a major British publication. Her column was longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2011. She was included in the Independent’s Pink List for 2012, 2013 and 2014, and is a regular contributor to the New Statesman. She has also written for Granta, TimeOut, Filmwaves, 3am, the London Review of Books, the New Humanist, the New Inquiry, and many other publications. She lives in London.

Language Notes

In July 2012, aged 30, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery and felt for the first time that her body matched the person she felt she had been since childhood.
Through university and then in a series of dead end clerical jobs, Jacques felt out of place with her surroundings and with who she really was. Living in Brighton, trying to launch a career as a writer, she navigates the hostilities and misunderstandings of growing up in a time when the mainstream media - and even feminism - fail to acknowledge transgender identity. Yet through films, music, politics and football, she begins to find herself and starts the process of transition - and life beyond.
Throughout her memoir, Jacques interweaves the narrative with powerful explorations of many of the major debates surrounding trans: the uses of life writing, the relationship with feminism, and the before and after images that illustrated so many articles and documentaries.
Brilliantly written, revealing and honest, Trans also includes an epilogue with award-winning author Sheila Heti, in which Jacques and Heti discuss the issues facing transgender people.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1784781673
• ISBN 13: 9781784781675
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320