Nevada
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels
"[Nevada] is defiant, terse, not quite cynical, sometimes flip, addressed to people who think they know. It is, if you like, punk rock." —The New Yorker
"Nevada is a book that changed my life: it shaped both my worldview and personhood, making me the writer I am. And it did so by the oldest of methods, by telling a wise, hilarious, and gripping story." —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
A beloved and blistering cult classic and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction finally back in print, Nevada follows a disaffected trans woman as she embarks on a cross-country road trip.
Maria Griffiths is almost thirty and works at a used bookstore in New York City while trying to stay true to her punk values. She’s in love with her bike but not with her girlfriend, Steph. She takes random pills and drinks more than is good for her, but doesn’t inject anything except, when she remembers, estrogen, because she’s trans. Everything is mostly fine until Maria and Steph break up, sending Maria into a tailspin, and then onto a cross-country trek in the car she steals from Steph. She ends up in the backwater town of Star City, Nevada, where she meets James, who is probably but not certainly trans, and who reminds Maria of her younger self. As Maria finds herself in the awkward position of trans role model, she realizes that she could become James’s savior—or his downfall.
One of the most beloved cult novels of our time and a landmark of trans literature, Imogen Binnie’s Nevada is a blistering, heartfelt, and evergreen coming-of-age story, and a punk-smeared excavation of marginalized life under capitalism. Guided by an instantly memorable, terminally self-aware protagonist—and back in print featuring a new afterword by the author—Nevada is the great American road novel flipped on its head for a new generation.
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Community Reviews
Let me start off this review by saying I hate Maria. She is the exact kind of trans person I despise talking to and being around. She’s so pretentious that even her self-awareness of it feels pretentious. She seemingly has no interest in ever learning to be less self-centered. Upon seeing a complete stranger she guesses could *potentially* use her help as a trans elder of sorts she immediately sweeps him out of his regular life and adds more emotional turmoil to the storm he’s already trying to weather because it serves her own interests. And she offers him heroin.
Despite how much I resent Maria I still liked this story quite a bit. I don’t know how the author managed to craft a character this deeply unlikeable and simultaneously sympathetic. Some of Maria’s inner monologuing about her transness is genuinely beautiful prose that helped me better understand some of the struggles that the trans women in my life experience. There’s probably something you could get out of this no matter what flavor of trans you are.
But, a few complaints:
I never want to be That Trans Guy who whines about how men are treated oh so poorly in queer spaces (in which we even sometimes experience privilege over others, exemplified in Maria’s anecdote about the lesbian bar that accepted trans men but not trans women, though I can’t imagine a space like that being very nice to the few trans people allowed access anyway. And not to mention the various “fem & them” spaces and general queer spaces which are hostile to and exclude anyone too masc-presenting…). I also understand that this is a story about trans women and I assume it’s meant for mostly trans women. However. The few mentions made of trans men (in general, not including the one prominent transmasc character, who is himself not a terrible portrayal of a trans man but almost as unlikeable as Maria and as flat as a plank character-wise) throughout the story are negative and I wish we just weren’t mentioned at all. Those couple of sentences could easily be cut and nothing about the story would change. It makes me sad that there are transfems out there who have had negative experiences with racist, misogynistic, otherwise bigoted transmascs. That’s terrible and it should never happen. But I can’t help also feeling a little sad that I rarely find fiction mentioning people like me- most trans fiction is about transfems- and whenever we do happen to be mentioned it’s about how some of us are bigots who need to be avoided. Which, again, is true and important for us to talk about & work on as a community. But I don’t know. It wasn’t a very nice feeling reading those parts and they didn’t add anything to the book so I just wish they were gone. But maybe I’m still being That Trans Guy who’s overly sensitive to criticism when I just need to be a man and suck it up, and honestly it does feel sleazy to basically be saying “hey, sapphic women, I’m upset that you didn’t compliment men enough in your art!”. Which is not what I intend to say here and hopefully it doesn’t come across like that, but as Maria would say: Whatever.
And the hostility towards the genderqueer label was very out-of-left-field to me? Maybe there was a very critical work of feminist theory I missed, but I don’t see how genderqueer only equals empowered woman and is only an identity for AFABs? There are so many different sorts of trans people who identify as genderqueer and it certainly doesn’t only mean breaking gender norms. If it did, there would be no need for the label at all, since gender non-conforming already exists for that. Genderqueer is also a political stance and can be it’s own seperate experience of gender from anything related to womanhood or being AFAB. This felt reductive and unnecessarily hostile towards a small amount of nonbinary people and I didn’t quite understand if it was supposed to be actual commentary or the character continuing to be pretentious and unlikeable. I’d like to think it’s the latter.
Even though I have some issues with this book, overall I felt like I learned some things from it that will help
me better understand and support the people around me, so I have to rate it more highly than I would otherwise. This is a somewhat valueable story and if you read it you will likely get something out of it, emotionally, intellectually, in some way.
It’s also simply a bit fun to read about fucked-up people being fucked-up. These are not role models, they are depressingly realistic portraits of pretentious city queers and one egg who is headed in their same self-destructive direction. You hate them but you also want better for them. It’s the kind of book where you finish it and you go, well. Fuck. That sucks. But you’re not thinking about the technical skill in the writing or anything. Nobody grows and their lives suck. That’s the story, really.
Despite how much I resent Maria I still liked this story quite a bit. I don’t know how the author managed to craft a character this deeply unlikeable and simultaneously sympathetic. Some of Maria’s inner monologuing about her transness is genuinely beautiful prose that helped me better understand some of the struggles that the trans women in my life experience. There’s probably something you could get out of this no matter what flavor of trans you are.
But, a few complaints:
I never want to be That Trans Guy who whines about how men are treated oh so poorly in queer spaces (in which we even sometimes experience privilege over others, exemplified in Maria’s anecdote about the lesbian bar that accepted trans men but not trans women, though I can’t imagine a space like that being very nice to the few trans people allowed access anyway. And not to mention the various “fem & them” spaces and general queer spaces which are hostile to and exclude anyone too masc-presenting…). I also understand that this is a story about trans women and I assume it’s meant for mostly trans women. However. The few mentions made of trans men (in general, not including the one prominent transmasc character, who is himself not a terrible portrayal of a trans man but almost as unlikeable as Maria and as flat as a plank character-wise) throughout the story are negative and I wish we just weren’t mentioned at all. Those couple of sentences could easily be cut and nothing about the story would change. It makes me sad that there are transfems out there who have had negative experiences with racist, misogynistic, otherwise bigoted transmascs. That’s terrible and it should never happen. But I can’t help also feeling a little sad that I rarely find fiction mentioning people like me- most trans fiction is about transfems- and whenever we do happen to be mentioned it’s about how some of us are bigots who need to be avoided. Which, again, is true and important for us to talk about & work on as a community. But I don’t know. It wasn’t a very nice feeling reading those parts and they didn’t add anything to the book so I just wish they were gone. But maybe I’m still being That Trans Guy who’s overly sensitive to criticism when I just need to be a man and suck it up, and honestly it does feel sleazy to basically be saying “hey, sapphic women, I’m upset that you didn’t compliment men enough in your art!”. Which is not what I intend to say here and hopefully it doesn’t come across like that, but as Maria would say: Whatever.
And the hostility towards the genderqueer label was very out-of-left-field to me? Maybe there was a very critical work of feminist theory I missed, but I don’t see how genderqueer only equals empowered woman and is only an identity for AFABs? There are so many different sorts of trans people who identify as genderqueer and it certainly doesn’t only mean breaking gender norms. If it did, there would be no need for the label at all, since gender non-conforming already exists for that. Genderqueer is also a political stance and can be it’s own seperate experience of gender from anything related to womanhood or being AFAB. This felt reductive and unnecessarily hostile towards a small amount of nonbinary people and I didn’t quite understand if it was supposed to be actual commentary or the character continuing to be pretentious and unlikeable. I’d like to think it’s the latter.
Even though I have some issues with this book, overall I felt like I learned some things from it that will help
me better understand and support the people around me, so I have to rate it more highly than I would otherwise. This is a somewhat valueable story and if you read it you will likely get something out of it, emotionally, intellectually, in some way.
It’s also simply a bit fun to read about fucked-up people being fucked-up. These are not role models, they are depressingly realistic portraits of pretentious city queers and one egg who is headed in their same self-destructive direction. You hate them but you also want better for them. It’s the kind of book where you finish it and you go, well. Fuck. That sucks. But you’re not thinking about the technical skill in the writing or anything. Nobody grows and their lives suck. That’s the story, really.
The lack of quotes around dialogue threw me off. There is a large jump from Part I and Part II--felt like it was a different book entirely. I like Part I much more than Part II since Part II just focused on James rather than trying to resolve Maria's dissociative issues from Part I but I guess the deflection and unresolved ending just makes the book realistic. It was, like Binnie emulated, some combination of 'fine, whatever, okay, sure.'
A part of me wishes I'd never read this book. The very same part that whispers dark thoughts into my head about how worthless I am, how much I hate myself, how I've failed at every corner. The shadow within me tightens its grip as I hear in these pages a similar plight to my own, so familiar yet so alien. I do not know if this is a good or a bad thing, but it does hurt, that I know. I know it very well. This book is very authentic. The writing and the characters are awkward at times, but in so being it spells a certain honesty. It is raw experience, or perhaps my own experience informs here how these words are received. I don't know. I guess I just don't know.
I really liked this. I got to be educated some, and got to cry/laugh by myself in dimly lit rooms some, and got to feel as if I somewhat relate in some weird psychological ways. I have more I want to write, but think I'll give it a day or two to stew.
You should read this if you are interested in queer or trans fiction, or for any reason at all.
You should read this if you are interested in queer or trans fiction, or for any reason at all.
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