Young author Noah Truong is part of France’s new feminist and queer poetry scene. Manuel pour changer de corps is his first collection of poems. It deals with FtM (Female to Male) transition, recomposed memories of a trans childhood, the daily experience of a queer lifestyle, feminism, reinvented masculinities and loneliness too. The collection is divided into six parts, alternating intimate poems with poems in the form of “manual” chapters, tinged with wry humor, evoking the harshness of the injunctions to which trans people are subjected. From the succession of these poems emerges the story of a transitional journey.
But for people in minority situations, words are trapped, and that’s why poetry can provide a means of communicating unspeakable experiences. Noah Truong announces that he seeks to “intervene in language itself, to change the signifiers (language) rather than the signifieds (bodies)”. Ultimately, this collection suggests a political perspective in which “transfeminist empowerment” would enable us to change the world and the injunctions that weigh down on trans and minority bodies, rather than changing trans and minority bodies or lives.
