i'm getting ahead of myself now.

[subjective]

hi. please help me make a bibliography about passing & the politics related to it. passing of any sort. fiction, biographies, histories, theory, everything. not just good things, things that suck too. even if you think i've read it, write it down anyway so i can compile a thorough list.

okay thanks.

Comments

[subjective.livejournal.com]

good point.

oh, that tipton biography was horrible! dude. i just read black like me a few weeks ago. nickel & dimed should be on the list too. and danzy senna's caucasia, which was excellent.

i will keep adding as other people do...

[cubanvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

i totally loved Nickel and Dimed!
this is a little off topic, but have you ever read the last time i wore a dress by Daphne Scholinski? i think it would be something of interest to you, it rocked! it also scared me to death later on, looking at the criteria for "gender disorder" which she was committed under... i was like "holy shit, if my dad had known a little more about what he was doing he really could have made good on his threats!!"

[subjective.livejournal.com]

i had a lot of issues with nickel & dimed, mostly around the methodology. but it's useful for talking about "putting on" class. and i did read the scholinkski book, a few years ago...i should look at it again. i remember being impressed by it. (i'm sure i read somewhere that scholinski changed hir first name, but now i can't find it. hmm.)

[elks.livejournal.com]

i think it's dylan

[cubanvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

i liked nickel and dimed because it hit a more "main stream" crowd of readers, and so i was happy that these issues were finally getting some exposure. but the book also made me angry because my impression of her was a wealthy writer/columnist from florida who "came down" to my level of existence, and couldn't make ends meet. whereas i work the jobs she described all the time and am not going hungry. i just felt that putting yourself in those job situations for a few weeks or months, but knowing what you can go back home to, really kills the authenticity. there is no earnestness psychologically of "how am i going to eat."
whoa. enough of my rant.

[subjective.livejournal.com]

exactly. and also what elke said below about the sarcastic & condescending comments. a lot of people i've talked to argue for the book appealing to a mainstream liberal middle-to-upper class audience, in ways that other work doesn't, but that just doesn't resonate with me that much. eh.

[srl.livejournal.com]

It's now Dylan, as another poster pointed out; and I've heard in other contexts that Scholinski is living as a guy.

[srl.livejournal.com]

a few more:

/Trans-sister Radio/, i forget the author; don't remember much about passing there, but it's worth a read; a novel.
I'm quite sure Dorothy Allison's written something about being obviously "white-trash" and not being able to pass, classwise. It's all over her work.
/Normal/, Amy Bloom, which i haven't read.
/Becoming a Man/, Paul Monette, is all about learning to pass for a higher class via education; also about learning to pass for straight at a private boys' school.

Flannery O'Connor, whose work I don't know well, might have written something that concerns passing in a religious context, having been Catholic in the Protestant South. If you find anything, do let me know :)

Hm, and some of the essays in /Carryin' On in the Lesbian and Gay South/ may also relate; haven't opened that book in a while.