Black on Both Sides by C. Riley Snorton
The life of Christine Jorgensen, the first well-known transsexual in America, is a renowned example of how trans people were embodied in the postwar period. However, because of her fame, other mid-century trans narratives—those experienced by African Americans like Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris—have been suppressed. The significant ways race has played a significant role in the production and depiction of transgender individuals are obscured by their erasure from trans history. From the middle of the nineteenth century to the current day’s anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence, C. Riley Snorton explores a number of intersections between blackness and transness in her book Black on Both Sides.
Black on Both Sides by C. Riley Snorton
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Snorton examines how slavery and the production of racialized gender laid the groundwork for an understanding of gender as mutable by drawing on a rich and diverse archive of materials, including early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, and Hollywood films. Snorton explores a number of paths as she traces the shared ancestries of blackness and transness, starting with J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynaecology,” and ending with the negation of blackness that allows for transnormativity.
C. Riley Snorton examines the connections between blackness and transness in this outstanding and exquisitely written work. The variety of historical data is remarkable, and Snorton’s analysis is just astounding. He is tremendously persuasive in his opposition to the prevalent periodization of trans people as it is appearing in the clinic.
It is the first book-length effort to consider the connection between blackness and trans-ness in greater depth. He is particularly interested in considering the connection between fugitivity—the way that black people have managed to survive in a society that was built around their enslavement by evading capture physically, geographically, as well as internally, psychically, and effectively—and the type of movement that is referred to as “trans.” How is what I’ve dubbed a journey away from an undetermined beginning point through the societal obstacles that aim to keep you in the gender associated with your assigned sex at birth like—that is, similar but not the same as—the survival tactic of fugitivity?
