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Vivek Shraya. Graphic by David King, photo by Evan Robins.

The Future Feminine: Vivek Shraya Visits Trent to Speak and Perform for 29th Annual Margaret Laurence Lecture Series

Written by
David King
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January 28, 2025
The Future Feminine: Vivek Shraya Visits Trent to Speak and Perform for 29th Annual Margaret Laurence Lecture Series
Vivek Shraya. Graphic by David King, photo by Evan Robins.

Within the last twenty years the genre of contemporary “trans lit” has taken the Western literary sphere by storm, with authors like Imogen Binnie, Torrey Peters, and Casey Plett enjoying well-deserved critical accolades and becoming best-seller list mainstays across North America. 

This popularity has acquired a strange character as the cultural and moral panic around gender non-conformity unfolds alongside this through line of commercial and critical success. 

The re-election of Donald Trump is the cherry on top, and with his inauguration has come a swath of executive orders to erase perceived “efforts” to “eradicate the biological reality of sex.”—read: the human rights of transgender persons. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) estimates that the previous election cycle in the United States saw over $215 million in campaign spending on advertising from anti-transgender politicians.  I watched one memorable such advertisement during the 2024 World Series, and immediately turned to my friend to jeer at the absurdity of the “illegal transgender immigrants” receiving “gender surgeries” it parroted. 

When that absurdity became a part of the American political reality the joking quickly ended, and the sobering reality began to settle in. 

I, and many other people like me, find the life writing of other trans people captivating—especially seeing as it is my current academic pursuit—but I’ve long believed it to be vital to understanding the condition of transgender life under the North American regime of gender. 

Throughout my year of studying life-writing, I dove deep into the lives of transgender people of some repute: public figures like Laura Jane Grace, Janet Mock, and Elliot Page have dominated my autobiographical reading list, but none are as affecting and vulnerable about their plight as Vivek Shraya is. 

A multi-disciplinary artist and author, Shraya has authored best-selling books, acclaimed films, and boasts a long, flourishing discography. She is a seven-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, as well as a brand ambassador for world-renown beauty brands like MAC Cosmetics and Pantene. 

She is a force to be reckoned with. 

When I heard she was the speaker for the 29th Annual Margaret Laurence Lecture at Trent University on January 22nd, I felt the pull to go, especially in light of the January 20th spectacle in the United States. 

Hosted by Trent’s Department of Gender and Social Justice, the Lecture featured a keynote from Shraya detailing her artistic approach to discussing femininity from a racialized and transfeminist perspective. 

When Kelly McGuire, the Chair of Gender and Social Justice Studies introduced Shraya to students and faculty in attendance, McGuire listed Shraya’s achievements and noted that Shraya was “incomporable” in terms of artistic scope.

“Her influence extends beyond the arts and starts conversations about what it means to exist at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities and to find strength in one's full potential,” McGuire concluded. 

McGuire then deferred to Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, a Professor of and the incoming Chair for Gender and Social Justice. Jiménez spoke to the elephant in the room, but expressed gratitude for Shraya’s keynote despite the current political climate. 

“As a trans person, knowing that they're kind of coming for us is really terrifying to me,” Jiménez said. “And I can't think of a more important time to have everybody in the room.” 

“I just need beauty in my life, like books and music, and we're going to get some of those in today’s force-field,” Jiménez laughed, gesticulating wildly towards Shraya. 

As an educator, Jiménez took the time to personally thank Shraya for her children’s books discussing the importance of literary representation for gender non-conforming children of colour despite American state legislation banning books with racialized or LGBTQ+ themes. 

“You’ve made books for all ages, but just a little piece of my heart is in there because those books are reaching all these kids in Canada and changing people's lives,” Jimenez concluded. 

When Shraya began her keynote, she addressed the sombre mood she too was feeling, sharing how she’d struggled to do anything the days prior to her appearance at Trent.

“It's been kind of an an emotional 24 hours,” Shraya admitted to attendees. “I had trouble getting out of bed yesterday.” 

Shraya’s lecture and performance, however, radically changed the morose atmosphere. She discussed exploratory phases of her life—her childhood, her coming out, and her developing artistic practice—with an affecting honesty and vulnerability. It softened the harsh reality outside of the Event Space, a challenging prospect to those who frequent the Student Centre. 

Femininity is clearly at the centre of Shraya’s world: She engages with womanhood in all of her work, never privileging one aspect of her experience for long. 

This dynamism is what makes Shraya so compelling as an artist, and her keenness to experiment gives her well-deserved starpower. 

Shraya’s first novel, She of the Mountains, is a reimagining of Hindu mythology, wherein Shraya renders goddesses she grew up alongside into agents of their own destiny in a contemporary love story.

 In discussion of this book, she shows a clear reverence and respect for what would be considered sensitive material. Shraya worked extensively with illustrator Raymond Bezinger to create depictions of these goddesses that are explicitly more feminist which defy typical convictions of Hindu iconography.

Vivek Shraya with Raymond Bezinger’s depiction of the Hindu goddess Parvati in Shraya’s novel She of the Mountains. Photo by Evan Robins

“Parvati is always depicted with her husband or her children,” Shraya explained. “Here, this felt really important just to have her own page in the book and similarly her own section.” 

As Shraya progressed through a chronology of her work, she touched upon a variety of issues which she encounters in her everyday life as a woman, especially navigating friendships between other women. Shraya explores this best in The Subtweet, her second novel, about the friendship between two musicians imploding over a single Tweet. 

Shraya bemoaned how challenging it was to get The Subtweet published. Growing frustrated with suggestions to make her book “marketable” to publishers, despite the subject of friendship between women of colour being peripheral in most novels. 

“We just don't culturally value friendships between women,” Shraya said to attendees. “It’s why I set out to write a story that centered friendship between brown women, because books like that always include men, white women, white people, and romance.”

The subversion of social expectations and literary conventions has always been a cornerstone of Shraya’s approach, but that’s not without its caveats. Shraya has often found herself the target of lateral violence, and spoke to attendees about how powerlessness and disenfranchisement are so emotional for marginalized groups. 

“It's easier to just criticize and attack people in your own community, and I've experienced this as a queer person, as a trans person, as a brown person,” she said. “There is a lot of anger in our community, and rightfully so, but unfortunately we start to take it out on each other.”

Shraya feels that discussions of inter-community conflict will encourage deeper thought on coping with frustration, drawing influence from both Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse and the social contract transgender historian Morgan Page created around handling conflict with other trans people. 

“We've seen so much in recent years how it is so easy to just vent out our frustrations online, and sometimes that makes sense when you're trying to speak to power and people who won't respond to you,” Shraya recognized. 

“But when we start doing it to each other instead of actually having a conversation, I think there's a loss there.”

After reflecting on conflict and reassuring attendees of the keynote, Shraya ended her keynote with a performance of her songs “Part-Time Woman,” “Brown Girls,” and “Girl, It’s Your Time” with pianist Jonny Spruce. 

While life-writing has been a strong suit for her, Shraya feels that music—especially as a collaborative venture—is better suited to her as an artist. 

“Music is my first love,” Shraya told Arthur after the event. “I feel it speaks best to my condition, especially Part-Time Woman. That album has all the things I was feeling about being trans ten years ago, which all feel very relevant still.”

“There's something to me about trying to articulate those things in music and in a song that I love, that challenge.” 

Shraya creates celebrations with a reverence and respect for her fore-bearers, and brings a much needed radiance to any space she’s within. She is unlike any public figure I’ve ever met, and I struggle to find someone equally as approachable in her field.

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