5/3/2022 0 Comments State Surveillance, Carceral Cis-stems: Systemic Transmisogyny in the Poetry of Torrin A. GreathouseGrey Weinstein (he/they) The marginalization of trans women on a societal level is often best told through narratives of abuse. Poet Torrin A. Greathouse is no stranger to such abuse; her wide body of work explores the trauma of verbal and physical assault she experienced at the hands of her father as a child, at the hands of strangers as a sex worker, and at the hands of police as a trans adult. Greathouse’s debut poetry collection “Wound from the Mouth of a Wound” combines an exploration of this personal trauma with astute structural analysis of the ways in which transphobia and ableism function on a societal level. In “On Confinement,” “When My Gender is First Named Disorder,” and “I Was Looking for Dick & All I Got Was This Lousy Poem” Torrin A. Greathouse uses the metaphor of the panopticon to argue that both the prison industrial complex and medical institutions monitor gender variant people through state surveillance. Greathouse demonstrates that this surveillance forces trans women to police their own self expression; she compares how this systemic transphobia and interpersonal acts of transphobia both dehumanize trans women in order to justify their continued subjugation.
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Grey Weinstein (he/they) Transgender people face widespread violence from a variety of sources, from interpersonal acts of brutality to structural violence that denies them housing, healthcare, and employment at every turn. Trans women, especially trans women of color, are particularly vulnerable to this violence. How to capture and make sense of this violence– without romanticizing it or painting trans people as helpless victims– is central to the work of transgender poet Joshua Jennifer Espinoza. In the three poems “The Moon is Trans,” “A Guide to Reading Trans Literature (For Cis People),” and “Who She Was,” Joshua Jennifer Espinoza uses tone and imagery to argue that ever-present violence is used to control transgender women. However, even as cis people coopt this violence to ease their own guilt, trans women’s continued survival and resistance remains a source of hope for Espinoza.
4/1/2022 0 Comments The Way She SleepsElessar Younglove (They/She/Fae)Your hair is soft and red
Crumpled over white satin Like a newspaper against the door Inviting and filled with meaning Elessar Younglove (They/She/Fae)Elton John is an iconic singer, pianist, and composer whose career spans six decades. How could one possibly summarize such a dazzling and dynamic career? On Tuesday, February 8th I attempted such a feat at the Elton John Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour.
3/1/2022 0 Comments Borealis In the OasisGiovanni Smith (they/them)Aisha Sabatini Sloan holds a dual appointment at the University of Michigan as a Visiting Professor in Creative Nonfiction with the LSA English Department’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Literature with the Residential College. She is the author of previous works such as “The Fluency of Light” and “Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit.”
3/1/2022 0 Comments A Boy Named RoseElessar Younglove (They/She/Fae)I am determined to deny femininity
In exchange for flamboyance I think I understand what I wanted to be I am allowed to exist without apology 2/1/2022 1 Comment And It Looks Like We’ve Made It Once Again: A Conversation with Emily Lynch (AKA AdequateEmily)J. GillisFolks, do we have a bite-sized piece of gabby gold for you! Today, we bring you a chat with Emily Lynch (aka AdequateEmily on YouTube and Twitter). We set out to discuss the world of video essayism in the year of the plague, but wound up chattering about the directorial efforts of the Monkees for approximately four hours. The following is a reflection on how her passion for cinema began. We hope you enjoy- we certainly did.
2/1/2022 0 Comments In Immortality On Screen: A Review of “My Body is A Paradise” and The Night I Watched ItOlivia Spicer (they/she)As soon as we got out of the car, I started running. My roommate and I had just gotten home from the secondhand store, where we bought a bookshelf for a clean twenty-eight dollars and ferried it back with the power of queer determination and six bungee cords from Home Depot. We listened to Lady Gaga on the drive and took pictures of our sketchy set up at red lights. We caused a mild public disturbance with the volume of our music and accompanying scream-singing. As we pulled onto our street, the clock in the dash told me I was running late; I had somewhere to be in five minutes and a half mile of pure Ann Arbor residential area between me and it. I panicked. The car door was still bungee-corded shut, the ties securing the bookshelf to the roof threaded through all four completely rolled down windows in the middle of December, so I climbed out through the window. I undid the cords to help my roommate out and then began sprinting to make it on time. My asthmatic lungs felt scraped raw by the frigid air and my shoes were definitely not the right kind for running, but, damn it, I had a documentary to see.
Grey Weinstein (he/they)“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it,” Morpheus says to Neo in the original Matrix movie. “You’ve felt it your entire life— that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”
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