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Table of Contents
About The Book
Award-winning author Thomas Page McBee takes readers on a kaleidoscopic journey into the American archive, illuminating four centuries of gender-variant history—and the cost, to all of us, of its erasure.
In this groundbreaking, urgent book, Thomas Page McBee gives us the lens of trans time—nonlinear, multiple, cyclical—a radical perspective that opens up new ways of seeing both the past and the future.
Exhausted by a political cycle dominated by anti-trans cruelty and convinced that the nation is asking the wrong questions about gender, McBee sets out to ask better ones, bringing readers across the country and through time. Blending memoir, reportage, history, and cultural criticism, he digs deep into our national archive, tracing the surprising ways stories of gender variance appear in the media and public record—and the alternating cycle of liberation and repressive backlash that leads, again and again, to a collective historical amnesia.
Seeking to recover what has been lost, and offering an expansive, vivid vision of our shared past, Trans Time Travel moves from the Public Universal Friend, an 18th-century genderless preacher and evangelist who taught and embodied gender equality; to Western outlaw and sex symbol, Harry Allen, who “smashed hearts” up and down the West Coast; to an overdue re-reporting of the life and murder of Brandon Teena, sensationalized first in newspaper accounts and then in the cult ‘90s indie film, Boys Don’t Cry; to Mary Jones, a sex worker in 19th-century New York, whose arrest made her a tabloid sensation of the newfound penny presses; to the pioneering work of midcentury philanthropist and psychonaut, Reed Erickson.
Personal, profound, and perspective-shifting, Trans Time Travel reckons with a hostile present by looking back—and offers a clear-sighted, hopeful way forward.
In this groundbreaking, urgent book, Thomas Page McBee gives us the lens of trans time—nonlinear, multiple, cyclical—a radical perspective that opens up new ways of seeing both the past and the future.
Exhausted by a political cycle dominated by anti-trans cruelty and convinced that the nation is asking the wrong questions about gender, McBee sets out to ask better ones, bringing readers across the country and through time. Blending memoir, reportage, history, and cultural criticism, he digs deep into our national archive, tracing the surprising ways stories of gender variance appear in the media and public record—and the alternating cycle of liberation and repressive backlash that leads, again and again, to a collective historical amnesia.
Seeking to recover what has been lost, and offering an expansive, vivid vision of our shared past, Trans Time Travel moves from the Public Universal Friend, an 18th-century genderless preacher and evangelist who taught and embodied gender equality; to Western outlaw and sex symbol, Harry Allen, who “smashed hearts” up and down the West Coast; to an overdue re-reporting of the life and murder of Brandon Teena, sensationalized first in newspaper accounts and then in the cult ‘90s indie film, Boys Don’t Cry; to Mary Jones, a sex worker in 19th-century New York, whose arrest made her a tabloid sensation of the newfound penny presses; to the pioneering work of midcentury philanthropist and psychonaut, Reed Erickson.
Personal, profound, and perspective-shifting, Trans Time Travel reckons with a hostile present by looking back—and offers a clear-sighted, hopeful way forward.
About The Author
A. Klass
Thomas Page McBee’s Lambda Award–winning debut memoir, Man Alive, was named a best book of the year by NPR Books, BuzzFeed, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly. His “refreshing [and] radical” (The Guardian) follow-up, Amateur, was shortlisted for the UK’s Baillie-Gifford nonfiction book prize and the Wellcome Book Prize, named a best book of the year by many publications, and translated into multiple languages. In the course of reporting the book, Thomas became the first transgender man to ever fight in Madison Square Garden. His essays and reportage appear in The New York Times, The Atlantic, GQ, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and many other outlets, and his work has been supported by residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. He is also a television writer/producer, and his recent work architecting the transition story for Elliot Page’s character on The Umbrella Academy was nominated for a GLAAD award. He lives outside Los Angeles with his wife and dogs.
Product Details
- Publisher: Scribner (January 12, 2027)
- Length: 240 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668066881
Browse Related Books
Raves and Reviews
Praise for Amateur
*Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction
*Shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award
*Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize
One of The Times UK’s Best Memoirs of 2018, BuzzFeed’s Best Nonfiction of 2018, Autostraddle’s Best LGBT Books of 2018, and 52 Insight’s Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2018
“Brave, honest and touchingly human…a beautiful book that will resonate…with anyone anywhere in the world who is determined to become a better, kinder human being.”
—The Guardian
“There have been a slew of new books that have reckoned powerfully with manhood and masculinity and their intersections with race and sexuality. Among the best I’d rank How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, by Alexander Chee, Air Traffic, by Gregory Pardlo, Amateur, by Thomas Page McBee, and Heavy, by Kiese Laymon. They are very different books, but all exhibit the two qualities that Orwell said made him a writer: 'a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.'”
—The New York Times
“In an age when identity feels so splintered and fractional, McBee’s empathy with men feels refreshing, but it’s his determination to be accountable that is radical. He resolves his own masculinity crisis by doing the things men often think they’re doing, but so often are not: listening, asking questions, seeking help, being vulnerable.”
—The Guardian
"This book relays a subtle, profound personal investigation into masculinity and personhood ... McBee’s great twist is to treat masculinity itself as an anthropological phenomenon, represented by this bloody, extreme sport. Inside the fight, McBee finds reconciliation.”
—The New Republic
“A compelling example of humanity at its best, one to which anyone with a heart and a mind will relate.”
—Western Humanities Review
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