People have called Nevada "ground zero for modern trans litera- ture," and while I get that-before it was published, I don't think I'd read a novel with a trans character (much less protagonist) who I didn't at least sort of hate- I don't really feel like a genius visionary who invented literature centering marginalized experiences. At the very least, this idea occludes the work other people had done that made Nevada possible. So rather than focus on my own brilliance, I want to use this afterword to name and appreciate a few of the things without which Nevada could not have happened.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT, CHAT, SHE IS REALLY GONNA DO IT.

Edit: this is utterly deranged, this afterword is written in almost exactly the same tone she writes Nevada in. That's not a stylistic flourish for her fiction, I guess she just actually talks like this? Fucking rad, I guess her blog posts were like this too actually.

This, by the way, is context for some of the things that Maria says about trans guys that seem fucked up a decade and a half later.

Oh yeah, so she actually WAS just bitter and angry and shitty at trans men and she's running defense for it, because she lived with trans guys who did transmisogyny at the time. My initial read was bang-fucking on

If I seem gleeful, it's not because I wanna beat up Binnie or whatever but rather because this Afterword is finally confirming a bunch of weird shit I had assumed about Nevada, or had to gather vaguely in discussions like the ones we have here. I was right I knew it!!! All along!!!!!!!!

I guess at least she's owning up to it? But lol. I wonder if this book is responsible for any Tumblr flame wars, it has to be.

Also seeing Binnie say "nonbinary" is a break in the timestream. That's not fucking "genderqueer", what the fuck! You exist outside of 2008???

The reference to This Bridge Called My Back is surprising and pleasant, you kinda wonder how Nevada still ends up doing what is basically the "white-people-anti-racist-work" equivalent of Land Acknowledgement. Like, Otros Valles by Jamie Berrout stands in really incredibly stark contrast to Nevada, they have to be a pair y'know.

I would have to read all of this stuff, Junot Díaz and Dennis Cooper and Joanna Russ probably to see where Nevada's signature lovable style came from, but also maybe that is just Imogen Binnie herself.

More of this to come.