Crossing the trans bar: Thanuja Singam's journey through struggles and hope

Treading a path outside the gender binary is no easy task. In candidly raising the alienation and abuse that these people face, dental hygienist Thanuja Singam's memoir is an inspiring read

Thanuja: A Memoir of Migration and Transition

Author: Thanuja Singam (translated by Kiran Keshavamurthy)

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 216

Price: Rs 599

  Given that there are few literary works by trans people, especially in South Asia, Düsseldorf-based dental hygienist Thanuja Singam’s autobiographical work Thanuja: A Memoir of Migration and Transition is a welcome addition to the canon of LGBTQIA+ literature. It has been translated from Tamil by the assistant professor of English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Guwahati, Kiran Keshavamurthy.

 

In the afterword to the book, Mr Keshavamurthy notes that he was introduced to Ms Singam’s memoir while working on an essay on queer literature in Tamil. And like him, those who’ve read A Revathi’s  The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story (Penguin, 2010), will find “negotiations with gendered and sexual norms that are spatially organised and reinforced: toilets, homes, trains, hijra households and neighbourhoods.” However, there are several departures in Ms Singam’s book from Ms Revathi’s story, making Thanuja a unique attempt at narrativising the personal.

 

Divided into two parts with 68 short chapters, the distinctive achievement of this memoir is not only its accessible language — much to the credit of the translator — but also its style. Each chapter is episodic and reads like a long-drawn social media post.

 

Born in 1991 when the “brutal conflict known as the ‘Second Eezham War’ had begun”, Ms Singam’s story is as much a story about the afterlife of the Tamil diasporic population affected by the Sri Lankan Civil War as it’s about a trans person’s journey to find a home — in a land and a body that she can call her own. Ms Singam begins this book by sharing how her family had to “escape to India as refugees when the war intensified in December 1991”. However, they experienced discrimination as refugees in India. With the Indian government failing to cater to the needs of the refugees it had welcomed, Ms Singam’s father moved to Germany to find work and to apply for asylum there. She ends the first chapter with a chilling submission: “When refugees escape a war-torn country, they don’t just traverse land and water, they also traverse death.”

 

In subsequent chapters, she writes about her growing-up years. Influenced by “Tamil actresses and video jockeys like Meena and Pepsi Uma”, she’d apply makeup and be her own person, which, initially, was dismissed as a kid “just having fun”. However, soon she attracted a label of a “troublesome child”. Treading a path outside the gender binary in a heteropatriarchal world invites severe criticism and Ms Singam experienced her share of ostracism. For example, some Tamil men who would drink with her father would say that she was “a hybrid foetus born to my mother because of the sins she had committed”.

 

Her family would both physically and mentally torture her. Educational institutes — whether in India or Germany — were no good either. While the Tamil diaspora would call her names in the vernacular, the “white students at my school ridiculed those who were dark-skinned by calling them ‘forest dwellers’ and ‘black monkeys’.”

 

Sadly, the author tended to unconditionally place her trust in men who would accept her femininity only to satisfy their sexual hunger. This naïve judgement would cost her enormously. Often, she helped several men with money. And when she’d withdraw this support, she was abused. Multiple times, she even decided to kill herself.

 

Ms Singam notes several incidents in this memoir that inform readers how the internet opened up a world of new possibilities for a trans person to make connections.  Because Ms Singam desired to be a woman who would be as independent as a man, several relationships didn’t work out. Some of these men lied about their marital status. Others forged romantic relationships only to take advantage of her. Often these men’s families would not accept a transwoman as their daughter-in-law. There are incidents of casteism in Germany that Ms Singam doesn’t fail to document. Finding herself fighting these battles alone, she did make some “imaginary friends” too and, thanks to the internet, was able to find a network of supportive transwomen.

 

Sometimes, Ms Singam tends to generalise. For example, she thinks “Most Indian trans women think about wanting to become women when they are in their teens, but in Europe it happens when they are much older.” At other times, she’s spot on. For example, about the trafficking of transwomen — a form of modern-day slavery — Ms Singam writes, “There are many trans women who are trapped in this system like bonded labourers.”

 

For the issues it raises and documents candidly, but most importantly the courage Ms Singam shows, Thanuja is an inspiring read. Her book reinforces the belief in what the great James Baldwin had once noted: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” The world needs more such narratives. And on the Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, it’s fitting to celebrate Thanuja’s resilience.

 

The reviewer is a Delhi-based freelance journalist. On Instagram/X: @writerly_life