From the author of the Lambda Literary award-winning roman a clef, Tiny Piece of Skull, also available from Team Angelica Publishing, this chapbook is a passionate collection of highly personal poems by trans elder Roz Kaveney, most of them written in the white heat of the current moment of marked anti-trans hostility; others to mark Trans Day of Remembrance.
From the foreword: "In the autumn of 2021, well into the second year of Covid-19 and the start of the fifth year of the War On Trans, I noticed a lot of bleakness creeping into trans social media and thought it my job as a community elder to remind young people that things have been, if not worse, at least as bad in different ways.
Back in the late '70s, when I transitioned, I acquired as my peer group a bunch of slightly younger trans women who I met around Soho, and for a short while became their landlady, bail person and wailing wall. I had middle class and educational privilege they didn't - I hope I used it for the greater good. It was - as much as my time in Chicago - the making of me.
It taught me a lot about solidarity.
And then we all moved on. Some of them died: some of them are still alive.
The important thing about life in an embattled community is to have each other's backs."
