Prevailing political and popular narratives often treat the issue of trans death as an inevitability and reduce complex stories of trans life to their endings. This presentation outlines the transformative potential of creative forms of resistance and how artistic affordances engage with trans-inclusive feminism as an approach to narratives of trans existence. Rooted in Canadian author Kai Cheng Thom’s reckoning with the shortcomings of trans-exclusionary feminist thought and informed by Chinua Achebe’s conceptualization of re-storying, I explore how creative forms of resistance undertake the work of re-storying “necessary” trans death to orient queer death spaces around a trans-for-trans (t4t) praxis of narrativization. Drawing on examples from Thom’s I Hope We Choose Love and Vivek Shraya and Ness Lee’s Death Threat, this presentation celebrates how these texts disavow the “Good” Trans Character, who dies to satisfy transmisogynistic ideologies, and theorizes the t4t Dead Trans Character, who dies to reclaim instances of trans death as sites of hope, agency, and self-determination. I argue that in their re-storying, these creative forms of resistance recognize and centralize the transformative potential of trans existence and echo Thom’s call for trans-inclusive feminism to renounce narratives of disposability and invest in the dignity of all human life.
Presenter: Devon Harvey, Queen’s University
*This presentation draws from the presenter’s article, “Falling Back in Love with Trans-Inclusive Feminism: Canadian Creative Artists Re-Story Death and Choose Transformation,” recently published in Humanities: Harvey, Devon. 2025. “Falling Back in Love with Trans-Inclusive Feminism: Canadian Creative Artists Re-Story Death and Choose Transformation” Humanities 14, no. 1: 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/h14010004.