Beyond Repair

In 2008 Rosamond King argued that trans characters in Caribbean literature have too often been positioned as the noble saviors of postcolonial societies convulsing under duress. But new trans Caribbean politics are emerging. Accordingly, this essay joins a new wave of gender and sexuality studies in the Caribbean that reads for the ways in which contemporary queer and trans writers in the Caribbean refuse the burden of martyrdom and saviorhood. Rather than sustaining a politics of collective repair, these characters level judgment. The author examines Ada Patterson's short story “Broken from the Colony,” in which only trans women survive the flooding of the island because taking estrogen allows them to breathe underwater. This essay argues that Patterson's aesthetics materialize space for a trans-feminist geographic solidarity with the land in which debris, plastic, and other materials become part of “ecological nastiness.” Here disaster inaugurates new formations not only of the body but also of Caribbean land itself. Following recent work on trans ecologies, the author argues that these attitudes of ecological nastiness not only challenge the ruse of trans virtue but also ravage the postcolonial fantasy of paradise.