On Reading “Nevada” by Imogen Binnie
A set of unfinished thoughts, but meh. I wanted to write anyway.
Imogen Binnie writes “She’s like Sigmund Freud: she can come up with a million examples to support whatever bullshit theory she wants to support.” (Nevada 107) I take that to bold self-referenced sarcasm. I take that to be a refined point of view. It is both that and her (de)romanticization of NYC that kept me drawn to the novel. She mentions earlier “She’s even gotten good at riding a bike in a long skirt.” (33) What a fantastic detail about the queer girlie-pop romantic relationship to big city womanhood. An essence, jaja (because I laugh in Spanish).
I am in the midst of reinventing my own big-city womanhood. Yet I ache of the perpetual broken heart of a former light skin queer kid of color from the global south. And what I mean by that is exactly what I am trying to figure out. So, thank you Imogen for an ending at the opposite end of an emotionally pampering resolution. It is every bit raw as it is truthful to the art and journey of sexuality and gender identity.
Important theorizing from the trans experience allows me to examine more carefully experiences of my own. It is truly a disservice to the human experience not to dial in. Cisgender normativity only has to offer the lenses of heightened surveillance over trans experiences and bodies. Yet cisgender normativity gets hijacked for its inconsequence literally ALL the time. Like, for example, the fixation on The Process. What is commonly termed the coming out process, and for the trans experience becomes materialized via the term transitioning — sometimes. Binnie intentionally creates her characters to represent the after (Maria) and before (James) transitioning, not the in-between. It is precisely the portion that cisgender normativity’s lens of surveillance is Ob-sse-sed with, enthralled by that which is denied access to. Yet, here, I am (cis and all) mesmerized at a novel possibility (in the actual Novel) for re-fashioning threads of power.
In my bi/pansexuality from the Global South, sporadically flirting with the U.S. for 1-year-long periods of time sprinkled throughout, the process was a big fucking deal. Tense, dissected, and mourned with and by others.
The “What does that mean, then?” moment was the end all be all at every single step.
Like, what is the plan in this mode of homosexuality? How are you hoping to materialize it? Are you seeking to externally validate it somehow? Are you planning to remain passing the entirety of your life? And although sexuality and gender identity are different vectors, they are more often than not intertwined. And what we get despised for a lot and in a similarly tumultuous way of misunderstanding about all things queer is for the seeming desperation intrinsic to our desire. Desiring too hard to fuck too many other ones or desiring too hard to be someone. It is this risk of promiscuity that runs as a deep specter in cis-heteronormativity.
It took me years to understand what non-monosexual even meant. It took me years to understand part of the reason I felt the need to leave my country. La Lima gris donde aprendí a tender aventuras fundacionales para mi desarrollo o mi “coming of age.” That my fear, although not unfounded, would entrap me in cruel ways. And more crushingly than anything, what anchored me back into a downward spiral was the need to prove who I was.
Maria is raw, quirky, privileged, and self-centered at times. Flawed. She does not morph from an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan. It is never the point of Binnie’s novel to become invested in that route. Her journey is significantly more interesting in pointing to how her detachment and dissociative patterns went from survival strategy to normalized behavior preventing her from emotionally connecting in her relationship with another woman, and how to (maybe?) advise a kid to not do the same.
