" Nevada is a book that changed my life: it shaped both my worldview and personhood, making me the writer I am. It is, if you like, punk rock." - The New Yorker " is defiant, terse, not quite cynical, sometimes flip, addressed to people who think they know. It totally rules that Nevada is receiving this re-print, but it’s also not hard to imagine a world where Nevada never got picked up by FSG and mostly stayed out of print - a world where ten years from now we wouldn’t be talking about “a time before Nevada was published” because we wouldn’t be talking about it at all, where I wouldn’t have had occasion to write this essay, where I probably would have forgotten many of the above memories.One of Vogue's Best Books of 2022 So Far, Buzzfeed's Summer Books You Won't Be Able To Put Down, Book Riot's Best Summer Reads for 2022, and Dazed's Queer Books to Read in 2022
People talk about books as these sturdy, long-lasting objects, but while books are tangible, reading is ephemeral. That community, inasmuch as it can be called one, was never going to last: This is how micro-cultural moments work, how the internet in general works, and definitely how trans internet communities specifically have always worked. I also don’t say this to lament some lost online trans community, as much as digital rot is real and a problem. “What other random weirdos are out there making art we don’t yet know should exist, trans or otherwise?” Trans people are too varied for any book to be The Great Trans Novel, and Nevada is very specifically about young fuck-up white queer trans women - and everyone I know who responded to it usually fell into at least several of those categories. Now, to be clear: I don’t mean to say that Nevada spoke to every transsexual out there.
This all happened despite little conventional book publicity, and this moment not only inspired my own writing, but has stayed with me forever when I consider what books can actually do. In 2014, when Sybil Lamb and I toured our own books for Nevada’s original publisher Topside Press, I’ve Got a Time Bomb and A Safe Girl to Love, Sybil would often say to majority-trans audiences: “Anyone know Imogen Binnie?” and the crowd would always cheer. One girl threw the book onto the subway tracks because a scene made her so upset, then she immediately bought another copy. There was even an invite-only group called: “People Who Need to Talk About Nevada By Imogen Binnie.” There was fan art and fan fiction. My Facebook was wallpapered with exegeses of Maria and James H (the book’s other protagonist). They were communal in the most literal of ways.
These reactions weren’t isolated from each other.
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