Culture and trans literature

This chapter adopts an investigative twofold stance of transgender literary culture: as genre of literary creation; and as a dynamic and everchanging body of creative literary production characterized by diversity: diversity of authorial positionality, diversity of the trans community, and diversity of the emergent narrative forms. Such a stance necessitates the asking of certain questions. These questions in turn invite identifying a set of answers; answers with which to examine culture as trans literature. Questions coming to mind include: What is culture? What is literature? What is trans? Is trans literature identifiable by a set of conventions alerting readers to its significance? If so, what are these conventions? By extension, what are the forms of trans literature? What part does “culture” play in the historiography of trans literature? In this chapter, I consider these questions in presenting an overview of the central themes defining “culture” and “trans literature” that have informed, and continue to inform, critical theoretical perspectives of transgender literature from various cultural, disciplinary, and methodological viewpoints: Stephanie Clare, Judith Halberstam, Joy Ladin, Doman Lum, and Trish Salah, among others. The examination defines the terms “culture,” “trans,” and “literature” respectively in order to; both clarify their meaning and situate the context of these concepts within a specifically “trans” paradigm; in order to identify the limits of specific literary texts and genres with respect to exploring the intersections of culture and trans literature. In the final analysis, the central argument asserts that trans literature itself represents a literary and cultural force focusing on the tangible and imaginary expression of transgender experience in diverse yet equally distinguishable textual forms. The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature examines the intersection of transgender studies and literary studies, bringing together essays from global experts in the field.