Sympathetic Little Monster by Cameron Awkward-Rich (Ricochet Editions, paperback)

Publication Date: May 1, 2016

Publisher Marketing: 2017 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Transgender Poetry. Through a combination of lyric, narrative, & fractured essay, SYMPATHETIC LITTLE MONSTER attempts to make a space & a shape for the little girl who haunts our cultural/ personal narratives about blackness & transmasculinity. As a trans coming-of-age text the work is intensely inward-focused, but it resists the imperative of linear autobiography. Instead, it uses the personal as a tool to explore what kind of thing a "self" is, its relation to trauma & objectification, & its capacity to be multiple.