Andrea Lawlor

Andrea Lawlor teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College and is known for writing the novel Paul Takes The Form of a Mortal Girl, which was a 2018 Lambda Literary finalist. One journalist described the book as "the Great Queer American Novel".

In a 2014 article for Mutha Magazine, Lawlor wrote "I don't identify as a mother, a lesbian, or a woman at all, frankly. Yet I don't identify as a man either." They settled on the term Baba to describe their relationship to their child.

In 2019, a representative from the NYC Trans Oral History Project interviewed Lawlor, who spoke about their experiences in '90s NYC queer activism, fabulist trans literature, and being a nonbinary parent.

Lawlor grew up in Naugatuck, Connecticut, then moved to New York for college. They dropped out for a while to be an activist, later finishing their college education in Iowa City.

Quotes
"I love the word queer, because what's useful about it is that it has the potential to be radically inclusive. I hope it signals an interest in, if not radical political thought, at least a destabilising. Destabilising binary ideas of gender and sex. I really struggled with this feeling of not being trans enough, I don't feel like any of the words really work. I like words that leave things a little unclear. The main thing for me is if you respect people self-determination, and if somebody says they're queer, or they're trans, they are, and it's not that big of a deal."

"I remember when Stone Butch Blues came out the word "trans" wasn't used as much of a word as "butch". Butch meant what "trans masculine" means now. That doesn't scan now, because there are a lot of butch people who are transphobic or trans exclusionary… I used to identify really clearly as butch for a long period, and it's changed because a lot of that territory has been claimed by people with whom I do not share values. And there came a point where "she/her" no longer meant what I needed it to mean or have comfortable space in for me and so I moved to using "them" and I'm grateful for the people who made that possibility."

Links

 * Website
 * Instagram