The Terrible We

Trans Studies | Duke University Press | 2022

Winner of the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award & the Sylvia Rivera Award in Trans Studies

This imperative, timely, and necessary contribution to trans studies, disability studies, and mad studies does the kind of meta-level thinking about the ongoing genealogies of contestation and consolidation that grant trans studies institutional and political legitimacy. Cameron Awkward-Rich refuses to simply recite debates about the relationships among transness, trans studies and feminism, and trans studies and queer theory; he thinks through the unspoken and elided disavowals at work within them. Awkward-Rich is the kind of critical genealogist we need in the longue durée of the supposed trans tipping point.

Hil Malatino, author of Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad

Cameron Awkward-Rich intervenes in this critical moment in trans studies through a discerning, generous, and imaginative rereading of the debates, texts, and archives that have provided trans studies with its initial anchors. Reflecting on and resituating the early archive and critical practices of trans studies through a capacious and nuanced understanding of the field’s formative gestures, The Terrible We is a pathbreaking work.

Jian Neo Chen, author of Trans Exploits: Trans of Color Cultures and Technologies in Movement

One might not expect a book about bad feelings and mad habits to be a joy to read, but The Terrible We is beautifully written and important. . . . Honest, patient, and calling the reader to critically revisit how the splitting of trans from madness and disability has robbed trans discourse of important history and also depth, The Terrible We is a challenging and very much necessary book relevant to several intersecting constituencies and academic disciplines.

Claudia Schippert, Lateral