Book Report- Black ON BOTH Sides PDF

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BLACK ON BOTH SIDES: A RACIAL HISTORY OF TRANS IDENTITY By: Claire Donlan Introduction Opening Snorton’s “Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity”, readers are introduced to harsh lives and conditions lived by African-Americans. The book features the black trans advocate, Laverne Cox, who provides an account of brutal murder of Tamara Dominguez, the 7th transgender woman to be killed in 2015 alone. He further highlights the promising life and untimely death of Blake Brockington, the black trans man and Black Lives Matter activist who committed suicide in 2015. Although Snorton portrays the book as an academic text, the conditions lived by the black trans people seem not academic. Chapter One In Chapter one, “Anatomically Speaking: Ungendered Flesh and the Science of Sex”, Snorton explores how flesh lands someone into the proverbial question of “how matter matters” (11). Also, it enables readers to understand his explanation of fungibility as something that is replaceable and mutually interchangeable. Divided flesh illustrates the preclusion of some bodies from humanity by blackness as outlined in the genealogies of blackness and transness (20). Snorton applies such concepts to illustrate the operations of blackness to reorganize categories of sex and gender as human and nonhuman. Snorton analyzes Marion Sims’ case, arguing that the American policy and cultural discourse considered black salves as flesh, but not white femininity as flesh that is also examinable. This biasness highlights the co-institution of race and gender as he pens that

“captive flesh expressed in ungendered positions defining race as the sine qua non of sex” (33). This means that gender socially constructs sex, as captive flesh is the material and metaphorical base to unsettle perception of sex and gender as vividly segregated based on their relationship with medico-scientific knowledge. Chapter Two This discussion continues in chapter two, “Trans Capable: Fungibility, Fugitivity, and the Matter of Being”, which illustrates how gender indefiniteness is an important political and cultural tool within the confines of blackness. Snorton assesses how slaves tried to contort gender as they tried to escape captivity as explained in today’s operations, and race and gender mutability. He says, "Captive flesh figures a critical genealogy for modern transness, as chattel persons gave rise to an understanding of gender as mutable and as an amendable form of being" (57). Seemingly, this is the most comprehensive discussion of fungibility according to ungendered blackness on the grounds of trans performances of freedom and how blackness created new ways of comprehending transness. Chapter Three: Transit In this chapter, Snorton analyzes implications of transgender on racial blackness. He articulately applies canonical information by black men to support his theory of black gender and transness. Based on black feminist theorists, Snorton argue that the black mother is the symbol of black sociality. The trans blackness represents space, time, and place as well as the movement within the documentation of being, among beings and nonbeings, and between various categories of blackness. Therefore, the gender of black women is fungible and can reproduce. During slavery, slave owners created a system which tied status of an individual to the mother, rather

than the father. Therefore, Snorton rearticulates the issue of the color based on reproduction, “it substitutes the question of how it feels to be a black mother” (104). Finally, he outlines the fungibility of the gender of black mother and this enables authors to re-conceptualize blackness as both modern and human. Chapter Four: Blackout In Part Three, “Blackout”, Snorton analyzes color to examine functions of race, especially people of color, to enable him establish Christine Jorgensen as a celebrity and exceptional trans embodiment in America. According to Snorton, blackness and transness enabled Jorgensen to ascend to celebrity freely based on the parameters laid down by the American society to compare subjectivities of non-whiteness. He argues that blackness creates possible ways of transness. The chapter examines the racial order of things that emerged during the first transsexual celebrity and how black trans people gave rise to Jorgensen’s fame. It illustrates issues around Carlett Brown and Ava Betty Brown on how they were used by the black media to discuss “intramural issues regarding gender, sexuality and personhood” (143). In the course of these setbacks, Carlett advocated for the liberation of female impersonators citing their constitutional rights (160-161). Chapter Five: DeVine’s Cut In this chapter, Snorton analyzes the Brandon Teena archive and questions the sacrifices and the required exclusions for the legibility of LGBT stories for mass consumption. He further questions how blackness appears and disappears in the presence of white silhouettes in the history of LGBT. Furthermore, he examines the most memorable moments in LGBT history. For example, both the Stonewall Rebellion and the Compton Cafeteria riot were projects of brown

and black trans people, who are not included in historical stories. Besides, Snorton interrogates the “Brendon Teena archive” and describes the available materials as “…a memorial and a time capsule” (77). He emphasizes on other materials that exemplify black erasure such as movies. My reflection The book centers on genealogical assessment of the many intersections between race and transness through a comprehensive multidimensional archival research. As someone aware of color critique, Snorton illustrates how slavery and introduction of racialized gender became the foundations for a comprehension of gender as mutable. Therefore, blackness is not indifferent; rather blackness and transness are mutually inclusive, mutable and can replace one another. He explains how blackness and transness have been culturally construed such that they have been rendered as nonhuman. There was a point when the two of them found each other and the time before that kept them from doing certain things that they were not supposed to do was over. Because of the first choice. Before the war nobody knew what to do. Before the storm there was a tape that was found because the outside world didn’t know. Sometimes when there is something going on like this there is a person to blame and that specific person would be me at the current point in time. I actually am incredibly disappointed with myself on this specific occasion I would like to I thought that this time it would be different I thought this time I need to change. There have been times that I found out about a different class.

References Snorton, C. Riley. 2017. Black On Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. 3rd ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press....