kai cheng thom fierce femmes and notorious liars

All these stories form a mosaic of undertold trans femme of color experience that many will see their own stories reflected within. When she has her first run in with the violent gatekeeping the medical-industrial complex dishes out to trans people, guarded by the abusive Dr. When the protagoness gets her first tiny apartment all to herself, it’s a sanctuary that feels like “a box of melting chocolate with my maraschino cherry heart squelching at its core.” When she finds her first thrifted pair of luscious red heels that make her molten, armored and unstoppable. Thom’s work is full of poetic voice and trans femme of color milestones. Can’t take my eyes off them: these visions of what I could be.

You can find them anywhere if you know how to look and believe me, I am looking.

Dangerous trans women, hot as blue stars. She meets her best friend and trans femme of color mother and mentor, Kimaya, who swoops her to the Street of Miracles, where she says, “…The stories are true: The City of Smoke and Lights is full of fierce, fabulous femmes. The book’s never-named protagoness, the daughter of a Shaolin martial arts master and a cabaret singer forced into oppressive factory work by racism and migration, runs away from her home in a city called Gloom to the glamorous and dangerous City of Smoke and Lights to claim her life and gender as a trans Asian femme and to find and make community with other trans femmes. Unapologetically centering one Asian trans femme survivor’s life and a trans femme of color community, this book is all about how trans femmes of color love, ride-or-die, fuck, fight, and heal with each other. And Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars is full of dark-hot poetry, trans femme of color magic, and dangerous truths telling beautiful and profoundly hard stories about trans women of color’s coming of age.

Her articles on transformative justice and trans women of color’s art and survival strategies are always gorgeously composed and needed. I’d been excited about Thom’s writing and work for a while and was thrilled when I found out her first novel was coming out. So did every other femme I know-especially the trans women, Asian, POC in general, working class, sex working, and/or survivor ones (which is most femmes I know). I devoured Kai Cheng Thom’s Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir in four hours the night I bought it.

Kai cheng thom fierce femmes and notorious liars