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

"Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals." - N. B. Rosenthal, Choice

"Destabilizing formulaic transnational mobility stories that rely on an epic departure-and-return script, Aizura offers a powerful challenge to consider the wild movements of minor mobilities and the potentiality of staying in place." - Emmanuel David, TSQ

"[This] book evokes a pondering of how Transgender Studies as a field will move itself forward. Aizura’s own urging to give a voice to transgender people who straddle the margins of privileged trans-normativity reiterates the field’s mission of breaking new paths for inclusivity, intersectionality, and independence from myopic visions of what being transgender means today." - Muriel Vernon, Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"Mobile Subjects is intentional and thoughtful in its application of interdisciplinary research. . . . Through his multi-method and intersectional approach, Aizura brings forth a conversation that simultaneously accounts for the impact of gender, race, and class on seeking out and obtaining gender reassignment technologies, as well as the varying policies, practices, and vernacular inherent to transnational study." - Jacob Barry, Journal of Critical Race Inquiry

"Mobile Subjects is a multifaceted, ambitious, and careful analysis of trans people's lived experiences and responses to the monolith of the medical and consumerist models of trans identity. ... [This book] is an important and refreshing contribution to trans and gender-nonconforming studies and activism. It is an inclusive and descriptively deep project that responsibly introduces the broader community to the social realities and struggles of diverse and particular folks in the trans and gender-nonconforming community." - Alex Gruenewald, Hypatia

“Aizura’s Mobile Subjects models trans research that affirms the gender self-determination of trans people at the same time as it critiques the imaginary that surrounds gender reassignment.... Aizura posits transness as integral, rather than external, to national and transnational circuits of exploitation and oppression.” - Jean-Thomas Tremblay, American Literature

“Mobile Subjects provides new insights relevant and challenging for those interested in a range of topics and methodologies. This is a required read for our times...."

“... [S]cholars in a wide range of fields will find this book useful.... Mobile Subjects exemplifies what can be done when trans studies is integrated with science, technology, and society studies, and more ‘traditional’ gender studies theories, such as queer theory, transnational feminisms, and Marxist theory.” - K.S. Shindle, Catalyst

“Mobile Subjects is a complex, wide-ranging, and powerfully provocative exploration of how gender reassignment has been and continues to be shaped by physical and metaphorical tropes of movement....” - Isaac Gagné, American Ethnologist