Casey Plett brings trans love to the forefront in short story collection A Dream of a Woman
A Dream of a Woman is on the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist
Casey Plett's short story collection A Dream of a Woman finds quiet truths in Prairie high-rises and New York warehouses, in freezing Canadian winters and drizzly Oregon days. The collection of short stories explores partnership, sexuality, addiction, romance and love.
A Dream of a Woman is longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The shortlist will be announced on Oct. 5, 2021.
Plett is a Canadian writer who was born in Manitoba and has lived in Oregon and New York. Her novel Little Fish won a Lambda Literary Award, Amazon First Novel Award and the Firecracker Award for Fiction. Her first short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, was published in 2014.
Plett spoke to CBC Books about A Dream of a Woman.
Three-dimensional trans characters
""When I was younger, I didn't see many trans people — but there were no stories about the trans people I did see. Trans characters were either heroes or villains. They were either these evil people who are deceivers and who are 'crazy' — or these beautiful 'Disney hero angels' who are beset by tragedy, but could do no wrong or were struggling against the harsh world. That's just not the reality of how most people's lives go.
When I was younger, I saw a lot of trans people. But there were hardly any stories about the trans people that I saw.
"People do a lot of good stuff. But people also do a lot of really evil crap at some point in their life. So, because I saw no three-dimensional real people when I was younger, that was hurtful to me. That was harmful to me."
Love and sex
"I had the first story in the book kicking around for like a few years. I finished that story around the spring of 2019. That's when I thought maybe I have another book of stories in the end.
This book is about relationships and love and sex.
"I think this book is about relationships and love and sex. I had written a lot of fiction before where romantic and sexual relationships were in the background. They were part of the book, but they weren't the focus. So the idea of a book of stories that focused on those questions became really interesting to me."
A cast of characters
"I've always loved how in TV shows or even ensemble movies, you spent some time with some characters, some intense time with them. Then, all of a sudden, you're spending time with these other characters. There's this recursiveness to the story. All these characters are knit together, by some certain themes or ideas.
"You get to follow them all parallel. I really enjoyed that, building this larger book from these separate stories."
Writing for 'weird, strange, fantastical, mysterious' reasons
"I don't sit down at my desk to write fiction thinking about how I'm going to improve the world. That's not why I read and that's not why I write. There's lots of things I do in my life to be good to the people around me — and I attempt to do some good things to the world around me.
I don't sit down at my desk to write fiction thinking about how I'm going to improve the world.
"Nobody asks straight white men, 'How do you think your fiction's going to improve your community?' So I'm a little skeptical of using that as a rubric for the fiction of trans writers. I think that we write for all the same weird, strange, fantastical, mysterious reasons that other people read at night."
Exploring complex feelings
"Fiction is a place to stretch out and explore complex feelings. Characters struggle with certain things. What does that mean for other parts of their lives? I get very frustrated when I see characters who are dealing with some hard stuff, but then they're really nice and sympathetic all the time. That just doesn't quite feel true to life to me.
Fiction is a place to stretch out and explore complex feelings.
"I'm always fascinated by how at one point in your life you can feel so intensely about something and say, 'This person hurt me. They hurt me really badly. I'm sick of it. I'm not putting up with that anymore.' That's powerful.
"Then you can fast forward a decade later and you say, 'I still refuse to put up with that person's crap. It's not going to happen.' But other times you can go years without speaking to someone and all of a sudden you're like, 'We didn't resolve anything, but I miss you.'
"This is not unique to just young people. It can be at all points in our lives. I respected my characters' feelings at each point in their lives — and yet they changed."
Casey Plett's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
