Nevada (Binnie novel)

When Maria finds out her girlfriend cheated on her, she spirals out of control, stealing her girlfriend's car and buying heroin before heading west on a journey of self-discovery. In Nevada, she meets James Hanson, and immediately realizes that James is also transgender, but doesn't realize it yet.[1] The two travel to Reno together. Maria frequently lapses into long inner monologues throughout the book, reflecting on gender, heteronormativity, and social conditioning.[2]

Binnie has said that in writing a story about a transgender protagonist, she wanted to resist the risk of explaining "The Trans Experience for cis people," which she says often happens with transgender memoirs. Because Nevada is a work of fiction, Binnie said she approached writing it as a transgender story written for trans women. "One of the questions I was trying to answer with Nevada was, what would a story about trans women that was intended for an audience of trans women — what would that look like?" Binnie told blogger Sarah McCarry in an interview about the book.[3]

Nevada received a negative review in magazine Publishers Weekly,[2] but inspired other trans women writers, like author Casey Plett, who says the book was "very bleak and it ends in a tough way,"[4] but ultimately made her feel that "nothing was off-limits" to write about.[5] The book was also nominated for the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for transgender fiction.[6]

• Nevada at Topside Press (404, deprecated)
• Nevada for purchase or free download
• Nevada at wikisource