ABSTRACT
Trans memoirs and autobiographies are often written by adult authors, reflecting on childhood and adolescent experiences. However, there is now a small but growing number of memoirs written by young trans people themselves. This chapter investigates recent anglophone trans youth memoirs such as Some Assembly Required (Andrews 2014), Rethinking Normal (Hill 2014), Being Jazz (Jennings 2016), Finding Nevo (Zisin 2017) and others, to uncover how young trans memoirists discuss and represent their own experiences of sexuality in the context of trans subjectivity. While the discussion of gender is central to these texts, they also contain important references to sex, sexuality, and relationships. Here, self-representation around sexuality in these memoirs is analysed as a response and contrast to the way trans identities and bodies have been commonly discussed and framed by adults, especially those outside this lived experience. It will be argued that trans teen memoirs are a vital space for young trans people to safely explore both their gender and sexual identities, and to exert some control over how these identities are represented.
