Crossing the trans bar

Given that there are few literary works by trans people, especially in South Asia, Düsseldorf-based dental hygienist Thanuja Singam's autobiographical work Thanuja: A Memoir of Migration and Transition is a welcome addition to the canon of LGBTQIA+ literature.

- SAURABH SHARMA

Given that there are few literary works by trans people, especially in South Asia, Düsseldorf-based dental hygienist Thanuja Singam's autobiographical work Thanuja: A Memoir of Migration and Transition is a welcome addition to the canon of LGBTQIA+ literature. It has been translated from Tamil by the assistant professor of English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Guwahati, Kiran Keshavamurthy.

In the afterword to the book, Mr Keshavamurthy notes that he was introduced to Ms Singam's memoir while working on an essay on queer literature in Tamil. And like him, those who've read A Revathi's The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story (Penguin, 2010), will find "negotiations with gendered and sexual norms that are spatially organised and reinforced: toilets, homes, trains, hijra households and neighbourhoods."

However, there are several departures in Ms Singam's book from Ms Revathi's story, making Thanuja a unique attempt at narrativising the personal.

Divided into two parts with 68 short chapters, the distinctive achievement of this memoir is not only its accessible language—much to the credit of the translator—but also its style. Each chapter is episodic and reads like a long-drawn social media post.