Postcards

by Christina Cook

Spiling is a trans woman with an affinity for postcards. She’s like REALLY into them.

Spiling balancing attempts at old-school postal communication with her grandmother—who happens to be dead—with frantically completing her doctoral clinical training in counselling psychology. Postcards to My Younger Transexual Self (or YTS), Ages 0-119, is an auto-fictive work in which Spiling reckons with the discipline of psychology’s historic and ongoing pathologizing of trans identities amidst joyfully defining and redefining her gender with words like ‘nonbinary,’ ‘transgender,’ ‘they/them,’ and ‘she/her.’ Along the way, she meets a lip-syncing government clerk, a homemade robot, and her future selves, while discovering her connection to the generations of women in her family.

Dwelling in Spiling’s lyrical and playful narrative of transition frames a portal toward the multiplicities of transformation experiences across our lives. This portal will speak to any of us who have examined our deepest selves and cast new expressions into the world around us as we change over a lifetime.  

Credits
Written by Christina Cook
Dramaturg: Joanna Garfinkel