When Monsters Speak

“Whenever Susan Stryker speaks, I listen. Stryker’s career is one of those that has altered the way that those of us who came after her think—and live our lives. We are so lucky to now have a collection that allows us to trace her thoughts over her own life.” - Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

“Decades ago, the monster demanded a word with its creator, and thus was trans studies born. In these pages, trace years of intellectual labor without an academic job in queer San Francisco. Study the obligate fiction of a field’s birth. And surrender to the fear, then the pleasure, of challenging the surgeon in your head. Chase the experience, half psychedelic twinkle, half S/M ripple, of enacting theory in the flesh. Reading Susan Stryker, we are gloriously transformed.” - Jules Gill-Peterson, author of Histories of the Transgender Child

"Stryker provides a bracing assessment of frictions within the LGBTQ movement, criticizing cis gay and lesbian individuals who seek to secure a place in mainstream society by excluding trans people. . . . The result is a striking introduction to the work of an essential queer thinker." - Publishers Weekly

"In this slim volume, McKenzie Wark has collected some of Susan Stryker’s most prominent pieces, both fiction and nonfiction. Wark provides a robust introduction, setting the stage for this and subsequent generations to fully grasp the importance and context of her work." - Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine

"All roads to trans studies lead back to Susan Stryker and the collection of her writing, When Monsters Speak (edited by McKenzie Wark), is an essential buy. I and many others would not be here without Stryker." - Caden Mark Gardner, The Queer Review

"Lovingly sewn together from materials disinterred from academic journals, subcultural newsletters and zines, and San Francisco’s S&M dungeons, When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader greets us as a timely introduction to a founding figure of trans studies. . . . An immensely instructive reader that arrives at a moment when such visions of political potentiality and experiments in alternative ways of living feel more vital than ever." - Connor Spencer, College Literature