#jamie berrout

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[start-with-words]

They see you, but it's only because they have a purpose for you. They, with their hundreds of millions, refuse to see all the people whose lives could quite literally be saved if they had a piece of that money. But rather than give their fortune to poor poets surviving on food stamps, poets struggling to retire from sex work, queer and trans poets of color who will never get into MFA programs, homeless poets, incarcerated poets, young poets of the immigration camps (that is, every last child in those camps), and rid themselves of the horrible burden of inaction in the face of so much suffering—they give you the thinnest slice of that money as a fellowship instead. Why? Because your participation helps them justify this nightmare scheme.

Source: Jamie Berrout, in Essays Against Publishing (2020).

[etawardana]

Publishing after all is a culture of death. It is rooted in the fascist notion that there are people who deserve to write and those who don’t; that it is good and well for editors to determine who gets to write and be published based on a writer’s proximity to whiteness, their social class and level of education, their ability (in contrast to disability; ableism too is fundamental to publishing) to overwork themselves and create a nice product that fits into their capitalist model, and their willingness to perform literariness and craft, all of which are arbitrary, racist ways of determining what is proper and what is improper, human and less than human. Where tech culture presumes a right to use the land and sees it as a resource to be exploited, publishing culture presumes a right to filter through people and their narratives, it sees every person as a resource to be exploited, whether as a source of books, book purchases, or book material.

Source: Jamie Berrout, in Essays Against Publishing (2020).

[librarycards]

hi, do you happen to have any writings about gender written by transfem butches and/or transfem poc that you'd recommend?

Yes! first, I recommend checking out this post, where I recommend / crowdsource some readings on butch trans womanhood / TMA subjectivity. I also highly recommend Emi Koyama's blog/body of work, b. binaohan's numerous writings and books, and the Trans Woman Writer's Collective (founded by Jamie Berrout, a powerhouse author/editor in her own right). My friend Valerie (@grimesapologist) has an excellent pamphlet out with them!

Some transfem/trans woman/TMA (acknowledging that there is as much variation in gender among TMA people as TME people, though the former group are systemically foreclosed from gender creativity in ways TME people are, within queer and trans circles, marginally permitted) writers of color I recommend include

micha cárdenas

Meredith Talusan

Vivek Shraya

jia qing wilson-yang

Ryka Aoki

Jules Gill-Peterson

Kai Cheng Thom

Trish Salah

[I've linked to my personal favorite/most influential work by most of the listed authors]

There are some great, relevant readings in the anthology Trap Door: Trans Cultural Projection and the Politics of Visibility. Lastly, this paper, A Tranifesto For the Dolls in Transgender Studies Quarterly is something of a who's who in this cohort of junior scholars in trans/feminist of color theory. Very exciting piece based off a very exciting conference roundtable that I actually attended back in 2022!

hope this helps :)

[familyabolisher]

what are some of your favorite non fiction books could be about anything i just need to read more non fiction

walter benjamin, theses on the philosophy of history

jamie berrout, essays against publishing

peter brook, reading for the plot

eduardo galeano, open veins of latin america

jules gill-peterson, histories of the transgender child

franco fortini, the dogs of the sinai

saidiya hartman, wayward lives, beautiful experiments

emily k. hobson, lavender and red: liberation and solidarity in the gay and lesbian left

ghassan kanafani, on zionist literature

amin maalouf, the crusades through arab eyes

toni morrison, playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination

dominique laporte, history of shit

vincent woodard, the delectable negro: human consumption and homoeroticism in US slave culture

[transnovelsbracket]

This is the randomly-generated bracket for adult (i.e. non-YA) novels by trans authors! The books are as follows (in order of when I thought of them). Please boost this post! The first round will begin tomorrow, or as soon as I get at least a couple of reblogs on this.

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars, Kai Cheng Thom

Little Fish, Casey Plett

Small Beauty, jia qing wilson-yang

She Who Became The Sun, Shelley Parker-Chan

An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon

Future Feeling, Joss Lake

Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg

Light From Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki

In The Watchful City, S. Qiouyi Lu

Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters

Nevada, Imogen Binnie

Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi

Summer Fun, Jeanne Thornton

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, Andrea Lawlor

Yemaya's Daughters, Dane Figueroa Edidi

Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin

The Thirty Names of Night, Zeyn Joukhadar

Machineries of Empire series, Yoon Ha Lee

The Tensorate series, Neon Yang

Sea Witch, Never Angeline Nørth

The Subtweet, Vivek Shraya

The Story of Silence, Alex Myers

Wrath Goddess Sing, Maya Deane

Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel, Julian K. Jarboe

Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey

Darryl, Jackie Ess

The Four Profound Weaves RB Lemberg

Little Blue Encyclopedia, Hazel Jane Plante

Otros Valles, Jamie Berrout

the earthquake room, Davey Davis

The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders

Running Down, Al Hess

[singing-river]

“Poetry as an infinite series of veils.”

— Jamie Berrout

[ghelgheli]

The Stuff I Read In March 2023

stuff I Extra Liked is bolded

Books

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Friedrich Engels

Essays Against Publishing. Jamie Berrout

Black Skin, White Masks. Franz Fanon

2001: A Space Odyssey. Arthur C Clarke

The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader

Blame! Vols 1-7. Nihei Tsutomu

قصه های من و بابا. جلد ۱ تا ۳

Short Fiction

Speech Sounds. Octavia Butler

The Thief of Memory. Sunyi Dean

Let's Play Dead. Senaa Ahmad

Description of a Struggle. Franz Kafka

Wedding Preparations in the Country. Franz Kafka

The Judgment. Franz Kafka

In the Penal Colony. Franz Kafka

Articles

The 9.9 Percent is the New American Aristocracy. Matthew Stewart in the Atlantic

You Are Not a Parrot and a Chatbot is Not a Human. Elizabeth Weil in New York Magazine

The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War. Vladimir Lenin

Climbing towards NLU: On Meaning, Form, and Understanding in the Age of Data. Emily M. Bender & Alexander Koller. DOI: 10.18653/v1/2020.acl-main.463

On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots. Emily M. Bender et al. DOI: 10.1145/3442188.3445922

The biomedical model of mental disorder: A critical analysis of its validity, utility, and effects on psychotherapy research. Brett J. Deacon. DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2012.09.007

Do Not Teach Kafka's "In the Penal Colony". Peter Neumeyer.

Teaching Paradox, Europa Universalis IV series. (link to part one)

Niel DeGrasse Tyson and Al-Ghazali. Tim O'Neill. (link)

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[specialagentartemis]

How dare you speak on gender, the thing that pervades everyone's lives. You must be a TERF because *checks notes* only TERFs talk about trans people? I mean I get what the anon was going for I guess, but that's a hell of a reach.

I don’t think it was a reach, I think it was entirely dishonest bait. I don’t think it was even slightly honest.

My post about historical misinformation had just reached a group of TERFs who were leaving mocking responses on it, and so this anon coming at the exact same time is hardly a coincidence. A TERF sent that ask to me, I assume to try to make one of these things happen:

I start to think trans people are hysterical and ungrateful and anti-feminist, so I stop defending trans equality and justice;

I desperately deny being a feminist or talking about women, so they can point to me as proof that people who support trans rights don’t care about women and/or that women are cowed into submission to the Trans Cult™;

My followers turn on me for TERF Accusations

All of those presume a really narrow view of how people think about trans rights, queer rights, and feminism. I could have just ignored it (EVERY time one of my posts about historical misinformation reaches TERF tumblr I get a handful of anon asks ranging from “bait” to “telling me I’m just like Hitler” (genuinely, I got that once)), and I could have just deleted this, but there IS a really important point to be made that on tumblr there seems to be this view that feminism is suspect because only TERFs care about it. And it seemed like a good venue as any to put a little bit more trans-affirming feminist contemplation out in the world.

But also like lmao yeah it’s hardly like any of us can escape gender in our lives, so thinking about it is Productive for everyone.

[librarycards]

hihi, i work in a public library & m always seeking new (to me) books & writers! i read largely magical realism & specfic w the occasional litfic (most recently Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!) & plenty of poetry by qtpoc whose imagery gets called “weird”, trying to avoid repetition of titles i’ve seen in ur already answered asks, here r some books/authors i love:

Past Lives, Future Bodies & Gods of Want (everything, rlly, but emphasis on the short stories & poetry) by K-Ming Chang

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi (particularly for the sense of utter existential dread it left me)

M Archive by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (hybrid forms <3)

Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde

& Jamie Berrout’s entire bibliography

tyty!!! p.s. just bc i can imagine them being clear connections to make, i also already know & cherish Akwaeke Emezi’s & Rivers Solomon’s books!

given that you're a library professional, i'm going to focus on un(der)known books with relatively little buzz! hopefully this might inspire you to order some of these or maybe find a new hidden gem :)

Niki Tulk, O.

Jesi Bender, Kinderkrankenhaus

Keely Shinners, How to Build a Home for the End of the World

Mairead Case, Tiny

Jay Besemer, The Ways of the Monster

Marwa Helal, Ante Body

Precious Okoyomon, Ajebota

i also have a book (forthcoming in aug., but I have ARCs/pre-orders open now!) you may like :3

there are other books I could rec, but I trust you've seen them in my other asks or know about many of them already!

[heyangelfire]

Every time someone mentions one of the queer/indie publishers (Graywolf, Milkweed, Lambda, etc.) or I see it on a spine of something I might like I think of Jamie Berrout. I hope she’s doing well.

[rollercoasterwords]

hey rae! you said you haven’t been reading many fics lately and i was wondering what were your favorite books you read this year :))

LOVE this question omg thank u 4 giving me an excuse 2 talk abt books <3 i'm gonna split this into fiction + nonfiction + poetry...will try 2 keep it somewhat concise but. fear it may get long...

fiction

the archive of alternate endings, by lindsey drager [favorite book i've read all year]

how to live safely in a science fictional universe, by charles yu

giovanni's room, by james baldwin

stone butch blues, by leslie feinberg

i'll give you the sun, by jandy nelson

and then i woke up, by malcolm devlin

on earth we're briefly gorgeous, by ocean vuong

cursed bunny, by bora chung

i have the right to destroy myself, by young-ha kim

infect your friends and loved ones, by torrey peters

the bloody chamber and other stories, by angela carter

at least we can apologize, by lee ki-ho

nonfiction

playing the whore: the work of sex work, by melissa gira grant

cistem failure: essays on blackness and cisgender, by marquis bey

gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity, by judith butler

essays against publishing, by jamie berrout

trans liberation: beyond pink or blue, by leslie feinberg

females, by andrea long chu

socialism: utopian and scientific, by friedrich engels

capitalist realism: is there no alternative? by mark fisher

whipping girl: a transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity, by julia serrano

poetry

soft science, by franny choi

grit, by silas denver melvin

in the pines, by alice notley

[transnovelsbracket]

Trans Novel Bracket Round 1

[ribombeee]

“Everything good about the anti-press (as I know it) the anti-press has borrowed from the underground economies of sex workers and trans women of color, of revolt and unsanctioned mutual aid, where the law is, ‘I accept nothing for myself that my sisters cannot also have / demand of me all that you do not have which is in my hands.’”

- Essays Against Publishing by Jamie Berrout, Isobel Bess