Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Synchronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Part II Diachronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Queer Genre
- 17 Queer Historical Poetics and Queer Formalism
- 18 Queer Mythology in American Poetry, 1855–1913
- 19 Funny Emotions
- 20 Queer American Poetry Now
- 21 Queer American Drama
- 22 The Gay Genre
- 23 The Oneiric Golden Age of Gay and Lesbian Pulp
- 24 Queering Desire in American Science Fiction
- 25 Queering Comics Histories
- 26 LGBT Bestsellers
- 27 History Touches Us Everywhere
- Race and the Politics of Queer and Trans Representation
- Space and the Regional Imaginary of Queer Literature
- Part III Queer Methods
- Index
27 - History Touches Us Everywhere
American Queer and Trans Memoir in the Long Twentieth Century
from Queer Genre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2024
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Synchronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Part II Diachronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Queer Genre
- 17 Queer Historical Poetics and Queer Formalism
- 18 Queer Mythology in American Poetry, 1855–1913
- 19 Funny Emotions
- 20 Queer American Poetry Now
- 21 Queer American Drama
- 22 The Gay Genre
- 23 The Oneiric Golden Age of Gay and Lesbian Pulp
- 24 Queering Desire in American Science Fiction
- 25 Queering Comics Histories
- 26 LGBT Bestsellers
- 27 History Touches Us Everywhere
- Race and the Politics of Queer and Trans Representation
- Space and the Regional Imaginary of Queer Literature
- Part III Queer Methods
- Index
Summary
This chapter traces queer and trans North American memoir through the long twentieth century by engaging the reality that for the majority of people in the majority of that period sexual identities did not adhere in a straight/gay binary and gender identities did not adhere in a cis/trans binary. To answer the challenge posed by this historical reality, this chapter proposes a theory of queer and trans memoir rooted in the racializing and classed gendering regimes and sexual arrangements of the period. This theory then guides the chapter through its engagement with the minoritized works of queer and trans memoir, skirting the white bourgeois gay male genealogy from Oscar Wilde to Edmund White that has too often been proffered as the geneology of LGBT literature.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature , pp. 470 - 486Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024