Mobile Subjects

"'Trans-.' The prefix itself denotes movement and boundary-crossing, and in this provocative new book Aren Z. Aizura deploys the rich metaphorics of mobility to interrogate how ‘transgender,’ as both critical concept and lived identity, moves across scales and locations, from the individual to the geopolitical. In discussing such varied topics as the trope of travel in narratives of gender transition, the persistence of geographical metaphors and Orientalist fantasies in transgender autobiographies, and the racialized global division of affective labor in Thai gender reassignment clinics that cater to white Westerners, Aizura activates all the politically freighted implications of analogizing gender change as immigration, tourism, settlement, or colonization." — Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution

“Mobile Subjects is a trenchantly argued, elegantly written, and deftly analyzed cultural study of the discursive and material practices of gender reassignment within a transnational frame. Mapping the political, affective, economic, and geocultural topographies that produce the various notions of ‘trans,’ Aren Z. Aizura offers a major work that will expand trans studies in an energized and provocative manner.” — Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora