Grover debuts with a stirring exploration of Appalachian queer identity. Writing about her transness and experience of living in the region, Grover rejects the portraits of Appalachia that have been put forth by writers such as J.D. Vance. Her version, rooted in the aughts, comes alive with anecdotes about mall goths and Evanescence fan pages, laid against careful analysis of what made that early virtual world sacred. Though Grover's verbose prose can betray her academic background, she balances it with accessible personal reflections, and her research begets a unique study of underappreciated elements of Appalachia, including an investigation into the region's traditional funerary practices. Throughout, Grover wrestles with the complicated nostalgia she feels for the place, even with all the faults she describes: "I long for community because it feels older than society and modernity, older than capitalism, or at least my awareness of it." Her words will resonate with anyone who has a similarly thorny relationship with home or has also grappled with being "desperate for the freedom and creativity of a time before the rampant drive of metropolitanism seeped into everything, before I became inundated with—implicated in—discourse." This is a unique, fascinating collection.
~Publishers Weekly
Intelligent and sharply perceptive. There is an exciting restlessness to Grover's thinking, and these essays take many unexpected and surprising turns. She writes inquisitively and insightfully about her identity and experiences as a trans woman, and about Appalachian folkways and artifacts and myths.
~Carter Sickels, author of The Prettiest Star
Tar Hollow Trans is a revelation. Sweeping, with stunning images and an enduring voice, this is a story that needs to be known: that of trans girlhood in rural Appalachia, told like a whispering, wonderous gospel. Heartfelt, haunted by home, and above all else, searching, this book marvels and creates the miraculous. I couldn't put it down, and it will live in me forever.
~Alison Stine, author of Trashlands
Tar Hollow Trans is all at once a complex archive of identity, a sharp meditation on form, a haunting history of place, and a love letter to the particularities that comprise a life. Grover offers beautiful prose and intelligent reflections on transness, Appalachia, family, and more with the kind of thoughtful nuance these themes deserve. I loved being immersed in these essays.
~Raechel Anne Jolie, author Rust Belt Femme
A book that courses like a river through place, time, and identity, Tar Hollow Trans is as finely crafted as it is necessary. Stacy Jane Grover has captured not just the deep feeling of Appalachian queerness, but the breadth of insight that comes from a life spent on the margins.
~Samantha Allen, award-winning journalist and author of Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States
Finalist for the 2023 Weatherford Award - Nonfiction Category
An essay collection that feels fresh and thoughtful, drawing you in with its observations.
~Book Riot
A powerful exploration of rural Appalachian Queer experience, in lyrical and probing prose that sings with joy while interrogating memory, history, and cultural traditions.
~The Kenyon Review
In these stories, Grover weaves personal narrative, history, and theory in a way that both enlightens and touches readers with a new voice that has been missing in Appalachian literature and activism for so long, a voice reclaimed by a return to story, place, and a deep, self-analytic identity.... The appearance of Grover's voice in Appalachian literature cannot be overstated.
~Still: The Journal
Tar Hollow Trans is about being poised between worlds. It makes the ordinary nowhere of Grover's experiences into a place worthy of habitation.
~Foreword Reviews
Filled with challenging history and identity politics, to be meditated upon as a prompt for self-reflection on one's own personal narrative.... Grover's extraordinary ability to manipulate the stark imagery of small-town Ohio onto the page allows readers to smell the soil of the corn fields beside the unpaved roads and the cigarette smoke in the parking lots behind the local Walmart. Her fondness for the place seeps into even the unpleasant details and uncomfortable memories; to share is itself an act of defiance.
~The Progressive
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction
