The Trans Generation
How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) are Creating a Gender Revolution
Ann Travers’s The Trans Generation is an astounding and essential qualitative study that collects heartfelt, honest anecdotes from a variety of transgender children and their parents. This book explores how trans people interact with everyday elements of society that become great sources of stress—how they navigate bathrooms, schools, sports, and their own bodies.
The Trans Generation is detailed, exhaustively researched, and heartwarming. Too often, stories about the death and suffering of transgender people are their only presence in mainstream media, if they are present at all. While transgender children’s precarity to death and pain is an important aspect of this book, it is refreshingly not the only one. Travers tells a comprehensive story that documents hope, perseverance, and a changing world along with the struggles that the children face.
Rather than exploring the lives of trans kids in a vacuum, the book takes into account various factors, such as race or wealth, that also contribute to a child’s well-being and place in the trans community. This intersectional approach is one of the highlights of the study.
While this book is readable for nonacademics, it is less so for those who aren’t familiar with certain terms that are common in queer and activist communities. Though there is a glossary included, terms like heteropatriarchy, neoliberal capitalism, and biopolitics are used without much explanation beforehand.
The Trans Generation sheds light on a marginalized group of people with respect and academic skill. For those who want to push themselves to learn more about the transgender community, or those with a transgender child themselves, this book is crucial. Travers contributes a necessary addition to sociological literature during a time when stories like these are needed most.
Reviewed by
Mya Alexice
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
