an ode to (trans) joy

It may sound surprising, but pain and exhaustion are deeply intertwined with trans joy, both for me personally and for many of the people I’ve spoken with for my dissertation. “It’s just this life is heavy,” as I note in this zine, and it is getting heavier by the minute. Laughing and crying and laugh-crying with trans people helps keep so many of us going. The care we offer each other as we imagine and build new worlds together is vital. The moments of levity we share in spite of all the pain nourish us. As the final page notes, in a quote taken from a review of Ethel Tungohan’s fantastic book Care Activism, “there is no choosing between caring and activism.”

This zine was made as part of a zine-making workshop series I ran in Vancouver, BC from late 2024-early 2025. I asked participants to create a zine inspired by the phrase “trans joy.” I made this alongside participants in the second of four workshops.