Reassembling components: Ivan Coyote writes down difficult things

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze a selection of texts from Ivan Coyote’s One in Every Crowd (2012) and Tomboy Survival Guide (2016) and to discuss the author’s ability to transform vulnerability into strength and resistance through their self-referential storytelling. The reading of Coyote’s stories is guided by Judith Butler’s conception of the relational character of vulnerability, Leticia Sabsay’s understanding of permeability, and Sara Ahmed’s discussions on queer (un)happiness and imposition. Coyote’s ability to confront the gender binary through narrative is also highlighted, together with their determination to create an archive for transgender children and youth, to let them know that theirs is not a unique experience, and that one of the ways to transform vulnerability is to break the silence and make use of creativity. My reading of Coyote’s stories confirms that narratives can be used by subjects to act politically, to resist regulation and control and to counteract the way in which concepts such as vulnerability and resilience, which are “politically produced,” are finally understood (Butler et al., 2016: 5). By breaking the silence that they associate with vulnerability and creatively “writing down difficult things” (Coyote, 2016: 221) the author metaphorically reassembles components for themselves and, especially, for their young audience.

But know this: it’s them, not you, and I see you.

There is nothing wrong with you.

Ivan Coyote, Tomboy Survival Guide (2016: 133)

Introduction

One of the stories in Ivan Coyote’s Tomboy Survival Guide (2016), entitled “Vul-ner-a-ble”, recounts the author’s reaction to the praise from a woman who wanted to remark upon how much their ¹ books had meant to her: “I wanted to thank you for making yourself so vulnerable. That’s what I always wonder when I read your work, what must it be like, to be so honest, so … wide open?” (2016: 220). Those words trigger Coyote’s reflection on the effects of laying “myself and my life on the page like that” (2016: 221), and their conclusion is that it is not vulnerability, but rather strength, that they feel by exposing themselves through their personal stories:

But I don’t feel vulnerable. Writing about vulnerable things doesn’t make me feel vulnerable. Writing about my tenderest bits is the only way I know how to have power over them. Staying silent would leave me alone with them. My silence is what makes me vulnerable. My secrets are sharpest when I am the only one holding them. Writing them down turns all my secrets into something else. Something closer to strength. (2016: 221)

This statement, which perfectly translates Judith Butler’s ideas on the relational character of vulnerability, as well as on its transforming power (Butler, 2016), summarizes very well my purpose in this article. My aim is to discuss Coyote’s capacity to transform vulnerability into strength and resistance through their self-referential storytelling. In doing so, I will also address the concept of resilience which is pointed at in that “closer to strength” feeling that, for Coyote, results from unveiling their secrets and speaking up. My focus will primarily be on those life narratives which deal with experiences of children and young people, be they the writer’s experiences or those of youngsters they have met. Coyote’s tender, transparent gaze at the lives of queer children, together with their resolute commitment to support them and address their feelings of confusion and alienation will be highlighted. I will analyse a selection of texts from One in Every Crowd (2012) and Tomboy Survival Guide (2016) to show how one of Coyote’s most important aims is to create an archive for transgender children and youth, to let them know that theirs is not a unique experience, and that one of the ways to resist the gender binary and transform vulnerability is to break the silence and make use of creativity. Yet, as the author clearly expresses in all their books, when telling stories in innumerable high school performances throughout Canada and the USA, they are not only aiming at queer children, but also at those who do not conform to the rigid norms of society and are left apart or bullied by the compliant, at times cruel, majority. As I will discuss, it is not only their own vulnerability, or that of other queer people, that is transformed through Coyote’s narratives but also that of heteronormative children — and adults — in the audience, further proving the relational component of vulnerability.

My reading of Coyote’s stories will certainly be guided by Butler’s conception of that relational effect of vulnerability; her speculations on what comes first, whether vulnerability or resistance, are helpful to reaching an understanding of the psychological processes that non-normative children undergo when coming to terms with their gender identities. Butler begins by stating that first, you resist, “and then you are confronted with your vulnerability”, only to continue by saying that vulnerability emerges very early, “prior to any gathering” (2016: 12) and, finally, concluding:

If we also say that the vulnerability to dispossession, poverty, insecurity, and harm that constitutes a precarious position in the world itself leads to resistance, then it seems we reverse the sequence: we are first vulnerable and then overcome that vulnerability, at least provisionally, through acts of resistance. (2016: 12)

In the case of queer individuals, both sequences of the relationship between vulnerability and resistance can be experienced throughout the course of their lives, and Butler helps us understand that linguistic vulnerability, our exposure “to name-calling and discursive categories in infancy and childhood” (2016: 16), places vulnerability prior to resistance at that early stage. I would like to highlight her stress on the dependence on “the language that sustains us” which Butler emphasizes by stating that we “do not only act through the speech act; speech acts also act on us” (2016: 16). Coyote describes in many stories “the performative effect” that “having been named as this gender or another gender” (Butler, 2016: 16) has had on themselves and on other queer individuals, and their resistance to that specific mode of vulnerability is observed, primarily, in the way they act back on those speech acts through their narratives. The accounts of their wilful resistance to the gender binary, as analysed in what follows, show the astute, creative strategies that can be used to circumvent heteronormativity.

When Butler reflects on the relationship between vulnerability and precarity, she refers to our “dependency on infrastructure for a livable life” (2016: 12). She exemplifies this by alluding to exposure to harm due to homelessness, later considering the effects of fighting against that condition. While Butler certainly refers to material needs, for my purpose in this article I would also like to think of the gender binary as one of the many infrastructures on which we depend for a livable life: one that fails for transgender people. Thus, in agreement with Butler, we can argue that when we have found that that on which we are dependent is not there for us, “we are left without support” (2016: 13) — an idea which helps analyse transgender experiences within the particular infrastructure of gender norms. Pondering, then, on the dilemma posed by Butler about considering whether vulnerability still remains an important part of public resistance, or whether resistance requires overcoming vulnerability (2016: 13), I want to emphasize her final statement that “vulnerability is not exactly overcome by resistance, but becomes a potentially effective mobilizing force” (2016: 14). It is my opinion that by laying bare forms of power such as the gender system (Butler, 2016: 6), and by questioning and resisting the gender binary through their narratives, Coyote shows their agency and mobilizes the different vulnerabilities they might have experienced. My reading of “Vul-ner-a-ble”, the story with which I have opened this discussion, is that Coyote’s perception of vulnerability does not dwell in the realm of passivity or injurability but in the realm of resistance, through which it is transformed and becomes “something closer to strength”. By breaking the silence that they associate with vulnerability and creatively “writing down difficult things” (Coyote, 2016: 221) the author metaphorically reassembles components for themselves and, especially, for their young audience.

Together with Butler’s ethics of relationality and interdependence, in my analysis, I will also refer to Leticia Sabsay’s articulation of permeability. Sabsay states that “we are all mutually affected by each other and the world around us, which in turn, is permeable as well” (2016: 286). Here, she describes two distinctive conceptual uses of vulnerability, one that relates to Butler’s notion of precariousness, and the other that she calls permeability, which is described as “vulnerability as the capacity to be affected (which might be acknowledged or disavowed)” (2016: 286). Finally, Sara Ahmed’s critique of the notion of happiness will also inform my reading of some of Coyote’s texts, especially her reflections on how the idea of happiness affects the way queer individuals interact with a quite inhospitable world, one that “‘houses’ some bodies more than others” (Ahmed, 2010: 12). The transformative potential of mobilizing vulnerability will be stressed throughout my analysis, which will read Coyote’s texts as illustrative of their willful confrontation of the gender binary through the articulation of empathic narratives that eventually reassemble the transgender archive. Not remaining silent is, in my opinion, one of the best political strategies used by this author who departs from their personal experience in order to creatively offer alternative, queer possibilities to rigid social norms.

Multiple reflections in the mirror

Sabsay’s recapitulation of Butler’s contribution to the relationship between vulnerability and relationality as constitutive of our capacity for action encompasses what readers can perceive in Coyote’s narratives: the linking of vulnerability with dependency, “the idea that we are radically dependent on others, and on the material and social world in which we come into being, and which might sustain us or fail to sustain us” and, finally the importance of “the capacity to affect and be affected” (Sabsay, 2016: 285). In my opinion, when Coyote looks at the queer kids and people they meet, they discover the kid they used to be, intermingled with the person they are now, reflected in a sort of symbolic mirror which seems to be pervasive in their narratives. In a beautiful game of (self)recognition, a queer space is created which allows the author to provide their young readers with strategies to better understand themselves and the world. Furthermore, in the process, those who look at transgender or queer people with suspicion find something about themselves touched by Coyote’s stories. Thus, on many occasions, the author’s initial fear of feeling unwelcome by a hostile audience ends up as a magic moment in which those people’s vulnerabilities are also shaken up. A mirror effect is triggered that mobilizes the vulnerability of the storyteller and that of the people they address.

In “Objects in the Mirror”, Coyote explains how one day, after observing pictures of their childhood, they phoned all their family to ask how they could all have missed the evidence that they were who they are. Through their answers, Coyote discovered that their relatives did know that they were an “amazing little strong personality” (Coyote, 2012: 68) and yet, had to deal with the hindrance that back then there were not labels for everyone, and thus they could not fix them into a particular category. Grandma Pat’s words express the wisest solution to that conundrum: “I never labeled you as anything. You were just boyish, and you did boyish things” (2012: 68). Coyote’s conclusion after having spoken with their family is, in fact, the following: “So it appears that for all those years, in all those photographs of that little tomboy, there was only one member of my family wondering about me. And that was me” (2012: 69). The account of that moment when they temporarily experienced the inability to actually see themselves when looking in the mirror is related to the lack of models that transgender children have access to throughout their growing up process. Coyote further reflects on that issue in the story, “Nobody Ever”, in which they introduce a 12-year-old girl they met after a show, one who declared herself their “biggest fan” (2012: 170). The girl acknowledged how important it was for her to have read the story “Saturday and Cowboy Hats” (2005):

“Thanks. I really love your books a lot. Especially the one about the tomboy, cuz, well, the little girl in that story, she reminds me of me.” She paused for a second, met my eyes with hers, and held them there. “And nobody ever reminds me of me.” (2012: 171)

The magical reciprocity of a world in which queer models can willingly circulate is highlighted further on in that story, which concludes when Coyote recounts how they met a woman in her fifties with whom they had a trivial conversation which ended with this statement on her part: “It was great to meet you. You remind me of me when I was a kid” (2012: 172). A game of multiple reflections is thus presented in many of Coyote’s stories, where the queer space created by this author consists in consciously looking at themselves, discovering their own reflections in the mirror and, at the same time, projecting them onto others.

And there is a very clear strategy in the way Coyote designs the content of most of the stories that are addressed to young people, which entails not talking specifically about the experience of being queer, but rather about the feelings of vulnerability that are connected to childhood and adolescence. In “As Good As We Can Make It”, Coyote provides a metanarrative of their school presentations. They explain that they do not say the words queer or gay or lesbian during their performance, nor do they talk about sexuality: “I just tell stories. Stories about me, my little sister, and my two little cousins, Dan and Christopher” (2012: 173). Indeed, Coyote makes a particular point in presenting Christopher, their “awkward, clumsy” cousin who used to be “mercilessly teased and picked on all throughout school, right from the beginning” (Coyote, 2012: 174). Their main objective in telling some of Christopher’s anecdotes is to get their audience to identify with him, “to invest in him somehow, to care about him, to sympathize” (2012: 174). And once that objective is achieved, Coyote, very much in control of storytelling techniques, just sits back and waits for some kid to make the predictable question: “where is Christopher now?” (2012: 174). At that point, they can give a twist to the expectations of the audience, telling them that Christopher killed himself when he was 21, and taking the opportunity to talk about bullying, “and what we can all do to work towards building a safe and respectful learning environment for each and every one of them” (2012: 175). It is precisely at that moment in this story when they talk of the suspicions that arise in parents when they are told that Ivan Coyote is going to visit their children’s schools. In one particular case, after a school had turned down their anti-bullying show, one of the students took his own life. Coyote, who did not have the chance to meet that boy, wonders whether their show could have made a difference to that youngster: “I don’t know that my show would have changed anything. I don’t know that. But what really haunts me is that I don’t know that it wouldn’t have helped him, either. […] What will it take for school administrations to realize that providing a safe school environment for all is more important than catering to the bigotries of the few?” (2012: 176).

Coyote is especially critical of the school system that does not create a safe, respectful environment for all kids, not only the queer ones, and their storytelling project aims at helping improve that situation. Their attitude is always positive, conveying the idea that it “does get better” (2012: 181): even if they always carry their cousin Christopher’s death on their shoulders, even if they think that those “It Gets Better” videos are not a real solution. At least, they say, they help you feel “a whole lot better” while watching them (2012: 181). Coyote indeed aims at “straight kids, adults, teachers” who can actually “make it better”: “I want to hear stories about straight kids who have moved from fear to humanity and stood up to become allies, I want adult former haters to tell conversion stories” (2012: 181; emphasis in original). Because, to return to the image of the mirror, the only way that device seems to work in Coyote’s narratives is by projecting everyone’s gaze from all directions, not just one. Their aim is to overcome the victimization of queer people and to identify those who are responsible for the suffering of others: “I am sick of young dead boys becoming icons of public compassion, and inspiring Rick Mercer rants we can share with each other on Facebook, while at the same time we continue to allow our principals and school administrators to cater to the conservative and religious right and pretend that our kids don’t all pay the price for their apathy and cowardice” (Coyote, 2012: 182). Through their storytelling, Coyote highlights the power of narratives that assert the agency of those labelled as vulnerable, confronting a world in which figures of victimhood “assume that those who are vulnerable are therefore without agency” (Butler et al., 2016: 2).

The mobilization of vulnerabilities is clearly exposed in “We’ve Got a Situation Here”, in which Coyote recalls what happened during one of their US shows on anti-bullying, one of those in which, purposefully, they do not deal with queer topics. Yet, on their arrival at one of those high schools, they were told that because they knew that sexual issues could arise during the show, the school had sent consent letters to parents, asking permission for their children to attend a show on “gay issues” (2016: 177). Some parents had banded together and decided to attend the show with the intention of disrupting the presentation at the first sign of “problematic content” (2016: 177). The school’s decision had also outraged the kids from the Gay/Straight Alliance, who had decided to bring kids from neighbouring schools for support, and security people had been hired. Coyote, who had not been informed of that situation, was obviously disturbed at their arrival but, encouraging themselves to be brave, resorted to their expertise as a storyteller and managed to captivate their audience — especially after they told cousin Christopher’s story. Even when they did not address queer issues, they thanked the queer kids for going to the performance, telling them how honoured and hopeful they felt to see them there, to see how courageous they were. It was at the end of the show, when they were leaving, that one of those concerned fathers approached Coyote, making them fear a confrontation. But the unexpected happened: the man shook their hand, introduced himself and, smiling, told them: “I wanted to tell you how moved I was by your presentation today” (Coyote, 2016: 184). The man, in tears, confessed that his expectations on going to the show were not to enjoy himself, but to confront them in case they said anything offensive. He acknowledged that the story of their cousin moved him, as he had also attempted suicide when he was a similar age:

“I grew up in a very small town in a very big Mormon family. I had a real tough time at school too, like your cousin. I thought I had gotten over most of it, you know, put it in the past, but today, well, listening to your stories about Cristopher, it all came rushing back to me. I was expecting to be offended by what you had to say, not moved. The good Lord brought you to me to teach me, and I thank you.”

I didn’t know what to say. We stood there for a moment, looking right into each other’s eyes.

“I’m so glad you made it through”, I told him. “And there we are today. I have to tell you I did not expect your words to me to be kind ones. Maybe we both learned something.” (Coyote, 2016: 185)

It is that moment of looking into each other’s eyes, the recognition of the other not as a threat, but as an equal, fragile human being, that Ivan Coyote masterfully displays in many of their stories. And the spatial and temporal moment described in this particular fragment, one in which the reader can perceive how affect circulates between the transgender storyteller and the Christian father, is a reminder of Sabsay’s articulation of permeability:

Permeability indicates the relational character of vulnerability in a way that highlights the impossibility of establishing a clear origin and destiny for the circulation of affect (both in spatial and temporal terms), and by this move it also reminds us of the unstable (and always in the process of being negotiated) boundaries of the vulnerable “I”. (2016: 286)

Both the father and Coyote admit in that conversation to having learned something from the situation they experienced that day, one in which the effectiveness of vulnerability as a mobilizing force is clearly presented. Indeed, that idea of learning from others, together with the responsibility to become a role model for queer kids and youth is an important part of Ivan Coyote’s project as a committed storyteller.

Learning/teaching others

But let me return to “As Good As We Can Make It”, since it could be considered Coyote’s declaration of intentions in their storytelling project. In that long piece, they ponder on the necessity for queer people to have role models, “someone they could imagine growing up to be like” (2012: 184); they also show their awareness that they have become, in fact, one of those models. Indeed, when people thank them and acknowledge how much their books and stories have helped them, Coyote admits feeling “simultaneously honoured and terrified”, conscious of the responsibility it implies:

How can I possibly be a role model, when I feel like I am just now starting to fit into my own skin? When I am still stretching and bending the space around me to make room for myself? How could I possibly give advice away when I just got my hands on it? (2012: 184)

Difficult as the task may appear, the author assumes that didactic enterprise and engages on providing different types of advice they would have given their younger self had they had some of the wisdom they have achieved in their forties. Some of the advice Coyote offers in that particular story is practical, seemingly trivial. They also introduce topics that have become leitmotifs in their overall artistic project, with a special emphasis on learning from others, and teaching what they have learned in turn. For the purpose of my analysis, I will focus on three aspects of that learning process which the author now shares with their audience: learning about family relations, learning about unfriendly spaces, and learning about resisting and overcoming alienation.

With regard to family relations, special emphasis is given by Coyote to their relationship with their parents, who divorced when they were young. The difficult moments experienced in their parents’ understanding of their gender identity are recounted in much of their writing, where readers can witness the evolution that has taken place throughout the years. Thus, in “As Good As We Can Make It”, while playing with the symbolic mirror and talking to their younger self, they tell themselves:

Your mother is worried that no one will like you, or hire you, or even love you, if you look “like that”. She is wrong. This next bit is really important: she does not mean to intentionally do you harm, or cause you to fear who and what you truly are. She worries because she fears what the world might do to you, and because she doesn’t know any successful tattooed butch storytellers with biceps and a brush cut. Yet. But one day she will, and she is going to love the hell out of future you. Trust me on this one. (2012: 185)

In a Butlerian framework, the mother’s attitude can be explained as fear of the vulnerability of the child in a world that does not provide the infrastructures on which they depend for a livable life; and that fear has been clearly identified by Coyote with the passing of time. Later, in “Shouldn’t I Feel Pretty?”, the author admits that now they understand that their mother was just worried about them and their boyish demeanour, and adds that they now regret that misinterpretation: “I wish that she had named what I saw in her eyes when she looked at me back then, I wish that she had called it fear. Because all those years I mistook that fear for shame, and that mistake has cost us both so much” (2016: 111). In “Dear Patricia”, directly addressed to their mother, Coyote finally states: “Now, I am older and I have replaced that word shame with others, closer to strength, closer to gratitude, and to pride” (2016: 118).

Their coming to terms with the real reasons why their mother behaved in a way that seemed unsupportive, yet was just a sign of fear, brings to mind Ahmed’s reflections on how “happiness is associated with some life choices and not others” (2010: 2). Ahmed’s writing on unhappy queers and her interpretation of many parents’ reactions when their children come out echo Coyote’s experiences:

You could say that the queer child is an unhappy object for many parents. In some parental responses to the child coming out, this unhappiness is not so much expressed as being unhappy about the child being queer, but as being unhappy about the child being unhappy. (2010: 92); emphasis in original

Ahmed, in fact, analyses those speech acts present in queer fiction, such as the cliché, “I just want you to be happy”, through which parents express their fear that the queer child “is destined to have an unhappy life”, and which constructs queer life as an unhappy one (2010: 92–93). Even when she defends the “unhappy archives”, Ahmed suggests that queer fiction should also represent happily queer lives, because “reading about characters who are happily queer in the face of a world that is unhappy with queer lives and loves can be energizing, can give us hope” (2010: 118). This is, in my opinion, what Ivan Coyote does in their artistic project which, while not neglecting the representation of queer unhappiness, invests most of its time in teaching how living happily queer lives can be achieved and how being accepted by others may, first, be a matter of self-acceptance. When they consider their overall relationship with their huge and complicated family, Coyote admits that they have been lucky, and remarks that if it took them over 40 years to accept themselves, they cannot expect their family to readily adjust to who they are: “I didn’t fully come to terms with being and calling myself trans until a couple of years ago. So, by that math, I give them another forty-two years of practice before I will start to expect them all to have it down perfect. Fair is fair” (2016: 168–169).

It is in such a way that Coyote has come to appreciate their relationship with their father, who is not as understanding and has not evolved in the same way as their mother with regard to their being transgender. He, in fact, refuses to call Ivan by anything but their birth name, “even though I lose a little bit of my heart every time anyone I love calls me by my old name” (2016: 166–167). Yet, Coyote shows in their texts that they have focused on the positive aspects of their relationship with their father, concentrating on “the things we have in common” (2016: 168), while highlighting what they have learned from him. Indeed, in “Thicker than Water”, Coyote states, “More and more, I find little bits of my father in me” (2012: 88). This story provides a list of all the habits they have in common, their passion for cars and mechanics, or how they “hate cheap tools and dull knives and loose screws” (2012: 88), and ends up with an insightful reflection about knots after acknowledging that it was their father who taught them “all the important knots” (2012: 90). The symbolic dimension of Coyote’s father’s taste for knots provides Tomboy Survival Guide with a recurring motif, as shown in the cover of the book, which presents an illustration, by Oliver McPartlin, of a heart tied up by different rope knots. In fact, throughout the collection we are presented with a variety of illustrations of knots, tools, or assembling parts, amongst other things linked by Coyote to their father and, ultimately, to different kinds of “tomboy survival”. The account of how they have come to terms with their relationship with their own mother and father, as with some other members of their family, is a significant proof of Coyote’s affirmative approach to human relations.

Coyote, however, also shows some of the negative aspects of being a transgender person in a world in which the gender binary is the absolute norm. And they try to teach other people what they have learned about unfriendly, binary spaces, be they physical or linguistic. Thus, what J. Halberstam coined as “the bathroom problem” in Female Masculinity (1998: 20–29) is presented by Coyote in all their books, together with the controversial issue of the use of pronouns to refer to transgender individuals. In “Dear Lady in the Women’s Washroom” (2012: 213–216), Coyote directly addresses a lady who was startled and screamed to see them at the female washroom, explaining that in their world, gender is a spectrum, “not a binary”; that everyone, “regardless of their gender identity, needs to pee” (2012: 213); and that when screaming at them, she is implicating herself “in a rigid, two-party gender system that tells others that it is okay to discriminate against people like me” (2012: 215). It is in “Be Careful in There” (2016: 129–133) where they put themselves in the skin of an eight-year-old tomboy who was stared at by a group of ladies when entering the women’s changing room at the gymnasium. The story, told in the second person, addressing the child, illustrates in a very straightforward way the unnecessary suffering and the feeling of non-belonging experienced by transgender children just because “there is no bathroom door with the silhouette of someone who looks anything like you on it” (2016: 130). Coyote repeats time and again to the child that they are not alone; and most important, in my opinion, is their insistence that queer children are not the problem:

It’s not you, it’s them. It really is. And those boxes, those binaries, those bathroom signs, those rigid roles, they hurt them too, they do, they carve away at their souls and secret desires and self-esteem and believable dreams and possible wardrobes and acceptable careers just like they do ours, just it’s harder for them to tell it’s happening on account of no one is hassling them in the bathrooms every other day about it. They somehow fit better in those boxes, so they can’t see what fitting has cost them, not like we can. (2016: 130–131)

Coyote emphasizes in these stories how what many people assume to be a personal problem of transgender individuals is really a political problem that society has to confront. The story that vividly represents and, in a clearly political way, addresses the problem with the use of public bathrooms is “Uncomfortable” (2016: 223–225). There, Coyote recounts the reactions of two remarkably different groups after they had published an article on gender-neutral bathrooms in a mainstream magazine: a group of right-wing evangelicals, and one of radical lesbian separatists. The message from both supposedly opposite groups was, essentially, that if they had to share a washroom with someone who looked like Coyote they would feel uncomfortable: “Both sides drawing pictures of different kinds of monsters that sort of look like me. Both sides unsure where to put the possibility of me. But I just need to pee” (2016: 224). After exposing the contradictions in the contentions held by both groups, and admitting that they are also afraid of women’s reactions to their presence in the women’s washroom, Coyote’s final reflection provides an open question: “Who the hell decides who gets to feel comfortable?” (2016: 225).

In her research blog, feministkilljoys, Ahmed addresses this quandary, resorting to the enticing idea of “imposition”. She asserts that because spaces assume certain bodies and not others, when adjustments to spaces have to be made so that some people can be accommodated, bodies can be experienced as getting in the way. The result is that the modifications required for spaces to be opened to other bodies “are often registered as willful impositions on those spaces”:

We learn from this: the world has already adjusted to some bodies. When an adjustment is already, it is not experienced as adjustment. This is how some bodies come to be at home before they even take up space; they are already accommodated. When institutional and public spaces assume certain bodies, history has become concrete. (Ahmed, 2014a: n.p.)

Ahmed’s reflections on how challenges to heteronormativity can be perceived as impositions can indeed be applied to different spaces, including the space inhabited by gender pronouns. She believes that gender can be re-described in terms of accommodation, in the same way that we interpret physical spaces. This is how she presents it:

You might feel at home in the pronouns in which you have been housed: “she” or “he” (oh the violence of this or, oh how few alternatives, oh we must rebel against the grammatical and gender law that says “they” cannot be given to a singular subject!). If you do not feel at home in a pronoun, it can become a site of struggle as well as estrangement. A pronoun can become uncomfortable: you might feel the pronoun as an imposition. (Ahmed, 2014a: n.p.; emphasis in original)

The insistence that you are not housed by the pronouns available is a willful way to make others “adjust to you”. And, as Ahmed argues in Willful Subjects (2014b), insistence is a form of political labour, one through which some individuals decide to refuse to be “quite so accommodating”: “Some have to insist on belonging, or not belonging, to the categories that give residence to others. Those who are transgendered or gender-nonconforming might have to insist on being “he” or “she” or “not he” or “not she” when you are assigned the wrong pronoun; you might have to keep insisting” (Ahmed, 2014a).

Coyote deals with this question in many of their narratives; in “Middle Seat”, they explain how difficult it is to struggle either to fit in or to escape from an assigned gender box, and how it becomes a matter of personal safety. The author uses a visual metaphor to illustrate the situation, describing how they feel cut by a little razor, a bigger blade, or a big knife every time strangers, classmates, co-workers, friends, or family refer to them through the pronoun they do not use: “Imagine that you have to get through every day, bleeding from hundreds of wounds, some little and some deep, all the while pretending that nothing hurts” (2016: 211). And that is why Coyote willfully and clearly declares that they want to phase out the use of the phrase “‘prefers the pronoun’ she, or he or they (or any other) and replace it with ‘uses the pronoun’” (2016: 211). Consequently, Ivan Coyote uses the pronoun they and there is no choice but to respect their wish, as they feel upset if their identity is not respected. This is what they have learned about the use of pronouns, this is what they teach others, and this is how wilfully they “impose” it: “And if you want to try the ‘but the they pronoun is so awkward’ angle with me, then I would ask you to think about how your struggle compares to the battles trans people have to fight every day” (2016: 212).

I would like to conclude this section by highlighting those tricks that Coyote offers queer children, so that they can learn that overcoming the feeling of alienation is very much a matter of being creative and constructing your own queer spaces. In fact, in “Be Careful in There”, the author shows what they have learned to do when they enter public bathrooms, like making eye contact if they choose the ladies room, or avoiding it if they go to the men’s room, trying to act “like you belong there”, trying not to act scared. All those coping strategies are summarized as follows:

Engage your superhuman powers. Try your cloaking device, your force field of invisibility, or your gift for shifting shapes. Open the eyes you have in the back of your head. All of these powers are somewhat diminished under fluorescent lights, and lowered if you need a snack or have your period, but your many superpowers can and do help. (2016: 132)

It is when they resort to the belief that alternative, queer spaces can be constructed and can provide comfort and courage to transgender children that Coyote displays their most powerful, positive message. And the best example appears in the story, “How to Build Your Very Own Unicorn Trap”, where they remind readers that they were a lucky tomboy who was loved by their family, and allowed “to pretty much be myself” (2016: 121). But in the knowledge that many queer kids are not so lucky, they share what was useful during their childhood: “When I look back, I know what helped me through. Skills. Knowing, asking, learning, practicing, and dreaming about how to do stuff. Even if girls weren’t supposed to be able to” (2016: 121–122). And to this, Coyote adds a very important ingredient: “I also had to believe in magic” (2016: 122). It is out of that belief in magic that the very detailed directions on how to build “your very own cruelty-free, non-leg-hold unicorn trap” are provided to readers. Three steps are given, the last of which relates to being patient; yet, once everything is explained, the author admits that there are no guarantees that the plan will be successful:

There are no guarantees, but the worst thing that will happen is that you and maybe a few friends will spend some time in the forest or in nature being kind to each other and perhaps reading or drawing, after having picked up some litter and collecting magic rocks, so really, you have nothing to lose. (125–126)

What is remarkable about Coyote’s recurrently positive stories is that they acknowledge the possibility of failure, the dark side of feeling different and living in a world which does not house everybody. In that context, Ahmed’s project to enlarge the “unhappy archive” (2010) comes to mind. Ahmed highlights the political engagement implied in those feminist, queer, and antiracist histories which show themselves as “unfinished, leaky, and shared” (2010: 17). The story “I Shine My Armour Every Night” (2016: 39–43) is precisely one where Coyote shares the very moment, in their adolescence, when they became aware of the dark, sad feeling of alienation. It recounts how their relationship with their best friend was broken by the misunderstandings provoked by a society which is not ready to house gender variance. There is no reference to the title anywhere within the story, but Coyote manages to transmit the power of that metaphor: that day, they learned that they have to shine their armour every night in order to feel braver, ready to fight the rigid norms of standardized society. Thus, while Coyote could be one of Ahmed’s killjoys, they are ultimately engaged in making room for those who are unhoused: “To kill joy […] is to open a life, to make room for life, to make room for possibility, for chance” (2010: 20).

What emerges from this discussion of Coyote’s works is their investment in recounting positive accounts of queer lives through the avowal of rejection, alienation, and failure. And this author does not follow social norms in their edifying project but, rather, circumvents them. Thus, where school teaches normativity and conformity, Coyote teaches strategies to survive and denounces the political framework that neglects gender variance. Moreover, they do not exclusively assume being a role model, but encourage young readers to become role models too, to resort to creativity and be the agents of change through writing their own lives:

So go. Find yourself a mentor, and be a role model. Be a leader. Be the change we need to see. Don’t wait for it to get better. Write us some better stories. Because somewhere, there is a kid out there who really needs your strength, and your courage. Someone out there needs you to be every bit of your brave, beautiful, talented self. (2012: 186)

Coyote defends and makes use of the power of narratives, because writing about vulnerable, difficult things, makes them feel stronger and overcome alienation. This is what they show through their artistic project: that the components that make up human beings can be knotted together and reassembled with tender fixings.

Reassemblage: Writing down difficult things

In the introduction to their book, Vulnerability in Resistance, the editors remark that vulnerability emerges “as part of social relations” (Butler et al., 2016: 4), and refer to “an unequal distribution of vulnerability” (2016: 5) in order to understand the condition of contemporary precarity. Even as their analysis focuses on significant forms of institutionalized violence, when they make reference to governmental practices that designate some individuals “in need of protection”, the editors highlight how that designation negates “the capacity of those declared vulnerable to act politically”, while expanding “biopolitical forms of regulation and control” (Butler et al., 2016: 5). Narratives can be used by subjects to act politically, to resist regulation and control, and to counteract the way in which concepts such as vulnerability and resilience, which are “politically produced”, are finally understood (Butler et al., 2016: 5). What Ivan Coyote exposes in “Vul-ner-a-ble”, the story that opens this essay, is masterfully demonstrated in the different narratives that have been studied: they show that “vulnerability is part of resistance, made manifest by new forms of embodied political interventions” (Butler et al., 2016: 7). For Coyote, resistance takes the form of confronting the gender binary, and they resist by not remaining silent, by mobilizing vulnerabilities through looking at themselves and others with empathy, by enlarging the transgender (un)happy archive, by making the personal political, and by making use of creativity in order to show that queer time and spaces can be inhabited.

According to Ahmed, “it matters how we assemble things, how we put things together. Our archives are assembled out of encounters, taking form as a memory trace of where we have been” (2010: 19). Ahmed uses the trope of the assemblage to explain how she gathered material for her book, emphasizing how archives should be thoughtfully constructed. I would like to conclude by following that thread since Coyote’s writing consciously draws on a process of assemblage. I would argue that Coyote’s stories take the metaphor even further, using it to visually show transgender people’s struggle to fit an exclusionary gender box and confirm the “theory that some of us come out of the factory without a box or with parts that don’t match the directions that tell our parents how we are supposed to be assembled” (2012: 138).

In Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability (2018), Jack Halberstam resorts to the terminology of Lego in order “to think seriously about new bodily architectures” (2018: 129–130). Referring to the script of The Lego Movie (2014), he proposes the use of “Lego language”, and stresses the potential of those architectures that can constantly build and rebuild the world in unpredictable ways, and which “are in a constant state of emergence and collapse” (2018: 131). His proposal includes the possibility of doing away with the instructions for assembly since, although Lego sets bring “orderly instructions for assembly” (2018: 132), children can always knock the whole thing down and start again: “The world of Lego is one of constant transition, and while there is always the possibility of returning to the instruction sheet and following the step-by-step directions, the uncharted territory of creation always beckons” (2018: 132). As has been argued throughout, in Coyote’s writing, creativity is a crucial tool for resisting the impositions of gender normativity: the child who deconstructs and reassembles components when playing becomes the adult who writes down difficult things. Both know that instructions, if provided, can always be ignored. Only the adult knows that breaking the silence can make you feel less vulnerable, that writing your secrets down can turn them into “something closer to strength”. Sharing that knowledge, enlarging the archive for those who need to recognize themselves, makes a big difference, as, eventually, we all get to know that the social worlds we inhabit, “are not inevitable, they were not always bound to turn out this way, and what’s more, in the process of producing this reality, many other realities, fields of knowledge, and ways of being have been discarded” (Halberstam, 2011: 147).