• Black on Both Sides

  • A Racial History of Trans Identity
  • By: C. Riley Snorton
  • Narrated by: C. Riley Snorton
  • Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (17 ratings)

Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.
Black on Both Sides  By  cover art

Black on Both Sides

By: C. Riley Snorton
Narrated by: C. Riley Snorton
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $16.16

Buy for $16.16

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives. Their erasure from trans history masks the ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-19th century to present-day anti-Black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

Drawing on a varied archive of materials, Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved Black women to the negation of blackness.

Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among Blacks in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of "cross-dressing" and Black literary works that express Black men's access to the "female within", Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993. Reconstructing these trajectories furthers our capacities to conceive more livable Black and trans worlds.

©2017 the Regents of the University of Minnesota (P)2022 Tantor
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about Black on Both Sides

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    14
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    9
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Highly Informative, Challenging, and Interesting

Incredibly interesting read. I will say many parts felt more academically dense than I was prepared to fully comprehend but I believe I grasped the greater concepts introduced by the text.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Marginalized academic philosophy: pros and cons

If you’re a grad student or writing a doctoral thesis on matters relating to Blackness, Black bodies, gender, and US history, this may be a book you’ve been waiting for. As someone no longer in the academic world, I had to re-adjust to a way of thinking abstractly that I had the desire and ability to abandon years ago. This is written in a discursive style and specialized vocabulary that only those immersed in certain academic disciplines will want (and be able) to comprehend. While I’m no longer interested in books that use terms like ‘historicity’, I’m glad there are such voices in white, non-queer, male supremacist institutions. More power to C. Riley Snorton.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful