I think that Zeke has an attachment to the religion that she grew up with in ways that she probably does not quite understand. I would say that “Not Bleak” is the where religion really rears its head. And I feel like if we applied the same things to transness, we can tell some really interesting stories. I don’t want to read that even if I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was like, “I’m going to write about Winnipeg the way that New Yorkers feel the freedom to write about New York.” Because also, in that way, you kind of escape these over-explanatory things. That was part of how I felt very freed, for example, when I wrote my novel Little Fish. So I was like, “Well, why can’t I do that with all the other shit in my life?” That was because, like most people who consume art in the English-speaking world, I had read books and seen movies and heard music that all were referencing New York. I certainly had to figure that out.īut an example I always use is, when I moved to New York for the first time, I realized that there are all these landmarks and part of the geography of New York that I had already sort of known or understood the references to, both in terms of getting around and also as social indicators. It was big for me when I realized that I could do that. And we’re going to bring it up when they become part of the texture of life in these very real and gorgeous and intrinsic ways. I’m re-reading Calvin Gimpelevich’s Invasions right now, and I think he is a master at this, not only with transness, but also with class and race and gender, where there are these things that matter so much in these characters’ lives, but also we’re only going to bring them up as writers when it makes sense. As with any skills that writers have where stuff becomes relevant as it needs to become relevant, once you get it, it’s kind of like riding a bike, it just kind of becomes a natural thing. I just don’t actually really think that’s difficult. Can you talk about rendering transness as simultaneously in the foreground and the background for your characters? For all the women in these stories, the fact that they’re trans is in some ways very important and in some ways very banal, which is true to life.
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