The Strategic Use of Shifting Point of View Narrations in Imogen Binnie’s Nevada

Abstract

Imogen Binnie’s Nevada has become a cornerstone for trans studies for nearly a decade. Since it was first published in 2013, it has become a staple in trans literature, challenging literary traditions and all-too-common coming-of-age stories that end in a predictable format of profound self-discovery, apotheosis, and personal transformation. Binnie’s Nevada does not end with such a resolutive arc. It complicates and leaves open some of the complexities of the trans experience that cannot be captured by normative literary conventions. I will examine Nevada’s subversion of literary point of view conventions, specifically shifting and unstable point of view narrations—moving continuously between first-, second-, and particularly third-person limited and omniscient narrative structures—which complicate our understandings of the relationship between (a trans) self and larger sociality that the novel aims to reveal. In addition, I will argue that Cameron Awkward-Rich’s concept of the “lyrical subject”—which posits subjectivity as a simultaneous experience of interiority and publicity—can be demonstrably portrayed and exemplified through the overall literary and shifting point of view structure in Binnie’s Nevada. This showcases the ways publicity and sociality inform an interiority of withdrawal and uncertainty that Maria and James, the story’s main protagonists, both endure. As such, I will analyze these shifting points of view in Nevada and read them as complicating traditional point of view narrations while discovering a deeper irony, instability, and complexity about the trans experience of subjectivity, illustrating why this novel should remain such a profound staple in trans literature for decades to come.