TW for misogyny, body horror and fertility/reproductive horror in the story; implied transmisogyny in the story, discussed more in-depth in the review.
I receive the verdict on a Sunday evening. They’re supposed to give you advance notice so you can put your affairs in order, but the letter is postmarked from more than a month ago—I’ve never been good about clearing out my mailbox—so I don’t see it until two days before I’m supposed to begin my transformation.
Absolutely stunning short story by Hannah Yang, published in Apex magazine. Reproductive justice is on everyone’s minds right now, and the fiction being published reflects that – but this is one of the first stories in a while that’s just completely and utterly grasped my imagination. Perhaps it’s the idea of transformation and ‘failed womanhood’ that appeals to me as a trans man; perhaps it’s just the throughline of forced fertility where if you won’t bear children, you’ll bear flowers.
I also want to give a shout-out to a particular, nearly throwaway line in the story that mentions a trans woman being forced to become a garden. In so many cis-authored books and stories about ‘womanhood’, either transness isn’t mentioned at all, or it’s dealt with in a clunky, “biology based” way. (I love you, Wilder Girls, but you are absolutely one of the culprits here.) While I obviously don’t know anything about Hannah Yang, the small mention here does so much to illustrate a wider, unseen world just outside the narrator’s personal experience — one where trans women, despite not being able to carry children, choose to transition anyway and accept becoming gardens as the price. While I’m on the other end of the trans spectrum, I see it as a rather lovely and understated way of being inclusive in worldbuilding without taking on the task of writing about Trans Experience.
Finally, the parallels between ‘becoming a garden’ and the routines many of us know so well — fertility meds, or birth control pills, or abortions and miscarriages, or painful periods — are part of what bring this home for me. Body horror is body horror; transformations are fun to write. But this body horror is extremely specific about where it’s located, and where it begins.
Highly recommended read, and congrats to Hannah Yang to what I dearly hope is a nominee in next year’s awards.
Elliott Dunstan 