The following is an edited version of the afterword of Andrea Long Chu’s Females , reissued by Verso and out this week. When my book Females first appeared in 2019, the vast majority of books by trans people were memoirs, and few of them were any good. This is still true today. The fact is that we are a young people, rapidly growing in historical consciousness but disadvantaged across every social vector, and most of us are still so occupied by the struggle to secure access to housing, employment, health care, and physical security that the question of our higher deserts—a proper literary tradition among them—remains distant and obscure. Most trans memoirs read like exercises in carefully solicited prurience, as if their authors think we will be given our rights if we just lift our skirts high enough.…