My Race Is My Gender

Portraits of Nonbinary People of Color

Edited by Stephanie Hsu and Ka-Man Tse

SERIES: Q+ Public

Rutgers University Press

Genderqueer and nonbinary people of color often experience increased marginalization, belonging to an ethnic group that seldom recognizes their gender identity and a queer community that subscribes to white norms. Yet for this very reason, they have a lot to teach about how racial, sexual, and gender identities intersect. Their experiences of challenging social boundaries demonstrate how queer communities can become more inclusive and how the recognition of nonbinary genders can be an anti-racist practice.

My Race is My Gender is the first anthology by nonbinary writers of color to include photography and visual portraits, centering their everyday experiences of negotiating intersectional identities. While informed by queer theory and critical race theory, the authors share their personal stories in accessible language. Bringing together Black, Indigenous, Latine, and Asian perspectives, its six contributors present an intergenerational look at what it means to belong to marginalized queer communities in the U.S. and feel solidarity with a global majority at the same time. They also provide useful insights into how genderqueer and nonbinary activism can both energize and be fueled by such racial justice movements as Black Lives Matter.

My Race is My Gender is a provocation and an invitation to consider how nonbinary life and thought could be put into the service of antiracist theory and organizing. Obliterating the binary between literature and criticism, this collection works across multiple genres, genealogies, geographies, scenes, forms, and fields of inquiry to make evident the ways nonbinarity can disarticulate, decipher, and decolonize the dominant ideology and infrastructure of racialized gender. A critical intervention and a pleasure to read and think with! C. Riley Snorton, author of Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity

This is a fascinating, timely, and important book. It foregrounds the often-invisible lives of nonbinary and transmasculine people of colour, contributing in an innovative way to decolonising, anti-racist, intersectional, and queer knowledge, politics, and culture. Surya Monro, author of Bisexuality: Identities, Politics, and Theories

STEPHANIE HSU is an associate professor and chair of the English department at Pace University in New York. Recipient of the 2020 Community Catalyst Award from the National Queer Asian/Pacific Islander Alliance, they are also an editorial collective member for the Q+Public book series.

KA-MAN TSE is an artist and educator whose awards include the Aaron Siskind Fellowship, Robert Giard Fellowship, and the Aperture Portfolio Prize. Tse is the author of the monograph narrow distances, and their work is in collections at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Harvard Art Museum, and Library of Congress.

Series Foreword
E. G. Crichton

Introduction: Your Race Is Your Gender
Stephanie Hsu and Ka-Man Tse

1. Outside In: Scattered at the Edge, Part One
Ari Solomon

2. What Flows through Me
Ignacio G Hutía Xeiti Rivera

3. Jonas and the Flowers
Jonas St. Juste

4. What Is a Pussy Anyway?
S. L. Clark

5. Outside In: Scattered at the Edge, Part Two
Ari Solomon

Epilogue: Androgyny and Other Forms of Nonbinary Race
Stephanie Hsu

Notes on Contributors

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