ABSTRACT
Gender nonconforming people feel the negative effects of climate change profoundly as the reports of the United Nations show. Transgender people, who are already vulnerable in their everyday life with regard to their health care, social relationships, financial activities, and poor accommodation, are most subjected to climate injustice. However, vulnerabilities, needs and resilience of trans communities are usually ignored in climate change management policies made by white heterosexual authorities. Trans people, by way of contrast, are on the frontline of climate change activism and climate justice for a broader ecological consciousness, survival, and removal of boundaries and gender binary. Both trans body and climate indicate transition and transformation since gender and climate are fluid. Transness and climate change are interrelated in that change in both realities is not accepted immediately in heteronormative societies in which both trans people and climate change are denied. Focusing on the entanglement between trans narratives and climate change narratives, this chapter aims to present the trans perspective in climate fiction across various literary sub/genres. To do so, this chapter offers trans readings of four contemporary cli-fi narratives within ecocritical framework, including Tentacle ([2015] 2018) by Rita Indiana, The Sunlight Pilgrims (2016) by Jenni Fagan, Cailleadhama: Through the Veil ([2016] 2019) by J. Scott Coatsworth, and the short story “Broken from the Colony” (2021) by Ada M. Patterson. In this chapter, I explore the response of trans literature to anthropogenic climate change, the role of cli-fi narratives in trans literature, and trans lives and identities in heteronormative, colonial and capitalistic settings at a time of climate crises. This chapter reveals that the cli-fi narratives shed light on trans ways of surviving the climate catastrophes through fluidity, temporality and adaptability, challenging colonial, late capital, neoliberal, and heteronormative illusions of the Anthropocentrism.
