you needed when you were younger and I was hoping I could be that for a younger Carrie now.”


Marshall draws parallels between the trans experience


today and that of gay and lesbian people during the era of Section 28. Introduced in 1988, Section 28 prohibited the “promotion of homosexualit” by local authorities. The law came to an end in the year 2000 in Scotland and in 2003 in the rest of Britain. Remembering the demonisa- tion of LGBTQ+ people in the press at that time, Marshall notes: “What was horrid about that was it happened because most of us didn’t know gay or lesbian people, or at least we didn’t know gay or lesbian people who were out. And it’s very, very difficult to be scared of people that you know. When you understand that people are just going to the supermarket and puting bins out, it’s very difficult to see them as a sinister force.” In Carrie Kills a Man, she seeks to reframe perceptions of trans people by tackling damaging media stereotpes. “I thought if I wrote a book about what happens when a really crap person goes through transition, maybe that would help people understand what it’s like. I’m not jumping out of cupboards making people frightened or anything like that. I’m just embarrassing my children, like every other parent does.”


Comedy has been crucial to Marshall’s approach to her memoir and her wry take on life is evident in her writing. This is thanks in part to Scotland’s unpredictable weather conditions, which the Glasgow-based author credits with helping to develop a particular sense of humour. For Marshall, this abilit to find joy in, at times, adverse circumstances has been fundamental to reflecting the pluralit of the trans experience. She feels, traditionally, publishing has represented the lives of trans people in a rather one-dimensional manner, saying: “There is quite a lot of misery memoir. And that’s absolutely valid—certainly people coming up in the generations before mine had a really tough time of it—but it’s not just about that”. Through writing her memoir, Marshall hopes to offer more nuance. “I devoured an awful lot of trans people’s books for a very long time, trying to make sense of it all—and they weren’t very funny. And a lot of this is very funny.” That’s where independent, alternative publisher 404 Ink came in. Founded in 2016 by Heather McDaid and Laura Jones, it aims to make publishing a litle louder and a litle more fun, and for Marshall the list was the perfect fit. “I


There is a real joy in being yourself. I am trying to avoid clichés like ‘living your best life’... but I think this is relevant way beyond being transgender


Book Extract


TheBookseller.com


Do you want to know a secret? Some secrets are butterflies, gossamer-light with translucent wings. If they escape there’s barely a flutter; the most they’ll disturb is a few motes of dust. But some other secrets are barrels packed with plastic explosive, so unstable and so dangerous that you have to bury them


love 404 Ink. I found them when they put out their first book, [feminist essay anthology] Nast Women, which was a real eye-opener for me because it was so intersectional and inclusive and a really thought-provoking collection. They were the only publisher I wanted to do this book with. I’m in absolute awe of them. I think they’re some of the coolest people in publishing.”


Coming out as a trans woman has been a revelatory process for Marshall, and in Carrie Kills a Man she grapples with losing privileges that were previously conveyed upon her. “I was ostensibly a cisgender, straight, white, middle- class man, and I didn’t realise that I had the golden ticket. Because you don’t—you just assume that this is how the world works for everybody, and then you experience this drop in status and you’re worrying about your safet and being marginalised and maligned. Then you realise, ‘Hang on a minute, this world isn’t really working for anybody’.” Since coming out, Marshall describes how she has been “making up for lost time”, consuming as much intersectional feminist writing as she can and reading books such as Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders, which she regards as “one of the best trans memoirs”. However, while acknowledging the challenges still faced societally by marginalised people, Marshall is optimistic for the future. She cites charities such as Scotland’s Time for Inclusive Education, which has gone from “a couple of guys trying to make things beter for LGBTQ+ people to being at the heart of [the Scotish] education system”. Founded in 2015, it works to use LGBTQ+-inclusive education to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools.


Rip it up and start again


It is this sense of optimism that permeates Marshall’s memoir and when atempting to sum up what she would like her readers’ main takeaway to be, she responds: “In a word: joy. There is a real joy in being yourself. I am trying to avoid clichés like ‘living your best life’ and stuff like that, but I think this is relevant way beyond being transgender”. In tandem with this, Marshall espouses living life less fearfully and underlines that it is never too late to start over. “The more people depend on you, the more terrify- ing the prospect of ripping it all up and starting again becomes. But you absolutely can do it. It’s not necessarily the easiest thing you’ll ever do, but if you find that you have gone down the wrong road and it’s just not working for you, you can absolutely start again. I think that’s quite an important thing, because I really felt for a long time that somebody else was writing my story.”


Carrie Marshall’s Carrie Kills a Man (9781912489558) will be published by 404 Ink on 10th November 2022.


deep and cover them in concrete. If you don’t, they’ll erupt with so much force that they’ll make the dinosaurs’ meeting with a meteorite look like a suburban dinner party. I knew that my secret wasn’t a


butterfly. Some boys want to be Batman when they grow up. I wanted to be Velma


from “Scooby-Doo”. Velma was super- smart, super-serious and sometimes sarcastic. I adored her. In her big glasses, oversized jumper and orange socks she was irresistibly odd, bookishly beautiful and completely compelling. Daphne may have got all the boys’ attention, but Velma was the one who solved the mysteries.


27


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