University of Massachusetts Amherst: Cameron Awkward-Rich’s New Work Named ‘Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Book’ by Lambda Literary Foundation
A new book by Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Department Assistant Professor Cameron Awkward-Rich, “The Terrible We: Thinking With Trans Maladjustment,” has been listed as one of November’s Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Books by the Lambda Literary Foundation. Published by Duke University Press, the book was also awarded Duke University Press’s Scholars of Color First Book Award.
Described as “a pleasure and a provocation” and an “imperative, timely, and necessary contribution” to the field of trans studies, “The Terrible We: Thinking With Trans Maladjustment” examines the bad feelings and mad habits of thought that persist in both transphobic discourse and trans cultural production.
“Like most first academic books, this one began as a dissertation proposal. Specifically, it began as a dissertation proposal in 2014, which was a bewildering year of trans representation in the U.S. It was marked, on one hand, by a fairly robust set of optimisms about the institutionalization of trans studies and the increasing acceptance of trans people in mainstream politics/media; on the other hand, 2014 was also saturated by the ongoing erosion of the conditions of livability for many trans people,” says Awkward-Rich. “As a graduate student in 2014, then, I felt caught between the profound and varied optimisms that circulated with trans as a political and intellectual horizon and the recalcitrant distress that marked the lives/writing of those people who constitute trans pasts and presents. So, I set out to attempt to write a book that helped me to understand and to bear the gap between contemporary discourses of trans affirmability and what it feels like to inhabit them.”
In the book, which observes that trans studies was founded on a split from and disavowal of madness, illness and disability, Awkward-Rich argues for and models a trans criticism that works against this disavowal.
By tracing the coproduction of the categories of disabled and transgender in the United States at the turn of the 20th century and analyzing transmasculine literature and theory by Eli Clare, Elliott DeLine, Dylan Scholinski and others, Awkward-Rich suggests that thinking with maladjustment might provide new perspectives on the impasses arising from the conflicted relationships among trans, feminist and queer. In so doing, he demonstrates that rather than only impeding or confining trans life, thought and creativity, forms of maladjustment have also been and will continue to be central to their development.
Awkward-Rich is also the author of two collections of poetry. “Dispatch,” published by Persea Books in December 2019, won the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and has been featured in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere. Awkward-Rich’s debut collection of poetry, “Sympathetic Little Monster” (Ricochet Editions, 2016), was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Firecracker award from the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. His creative work has been supported by fellowships from Cave Canem and the Lannan Literary Foundation.