Joelle Ryan

Gender Quake: Poems Joelle Ryan

Gender Quake is a book of revolutionary poems that explores what it means to be a transgendered individual in America. Joelle Ruby Ryan, a self-styled 6'6" transgender warrior, bares her soul in this collection of poems which is at turns humorous, poignant, searing and deeply passionate. From the ashes of loneliness, rage, and despair, Ryan charts an emotional trajectory which jolts readers into confronting their own shared humanity with differently-gendered people. Ryan covers topics as diverse as feminism, porn, passing, violence, activism and the urgent need for solidarity across lines of identity and difference. While the book explores the darkest corners of a life marred by pain, discrimination and self-hatred, it also repeatedly calls upon hope, love and justice as the primary correctives for imagining a better world. Gender Quake will shock you, educate you and most of all move you to join the fight for a gender revolution. "So World, take note: the Gender Quake is ready to activate, and the whirl is gonna be blissful, and divine, and unstoppable."