Super Late Bloomer: My Early Days in Transition

By Harris I. Qureshi

Julia Kaye’s Super Late Bloomer: My Early Days in Transition is a comic collection which invites audiences into her experiences as a trans woman early on in her transition. By virtue of the daily comic format, Super Late Bloomer is able to touch on many dimensions of transitioning as a trans woman. Kaye covers highs, lows, questions, and realizations related to transition milestones, relationship evolutions, as well as the non-linear and practical realities of transition. Notably, these stories are largely told through the lens of her personal mental health journey with gender dysphoria and euphoria, anxieties, self-criticisms, and more. She navigates moments individually as well as through support networks, mental health professionals, and community programs with like-identified groups. More biomedically-oriented anecdotes like uptake of gender-affirming hormone therapy is also aptly told through mental health framing.

As a reader I connected to the author’s decision to represent moments from different time points, allowing us to follow her evolutions. For example, Kaye catalogues the moment when she lets go of her self-described need to wear dresses in public to be coded as a woman. I also feel Julia, like many comic artists, succeeds in her use of streamlined black and white drawings, which both softens and renders everyday realities emotive and engaging for audiences.

It’s interesting to note that comics included in this collection are dated to 2016, a relatively different time for trans visibility and acceptance in North America. For context, 2016 was two years after Laverne Cox was recognized as one of the first mainstream self-identifying transgender actresses from her work on the “Orange Is the New Black” Netflix series, and one year after Olympic champion Caitlyn Jenner famously came out as a trans woman in 2015.[1][2][3] For this reason, I feel it’s important to appreciate the ground navigated by this public-facing collection, and the strife associated with Kaye publicly sharing her experiences, which she nods to in the book.

Regarding positionality, Kaye self-describes as a white trans woman, and this work does not meaningfully consider race and ethnicity within the trans community, or the relative differences in experiences between community segments. This is not necessarily a criticism of the collection, since this work is intentionally a personal and therapeutic endeavor. Moreover, it’s possible Kaye didn’t feel prepared or well-positioned to broach these topics. Nonetheless race and other elements of positionality are important to consider when exploring the current trans graphic medicine landscape; some eight years after this collection was written, there are now a host of works detailing racialized and other intersectional trans first-person experiences, whether it be in formal titles such as When She Set Fire To My Friends’ Houses by Chinese-Canadian non-binary lesbian disabled cartoonist Vincy Lim (they/them) or Instagram webcomics at @stickymangos by Pree Rehal (they/them), a Disabled, queer and trans-non-binary interdisciplinary artist of Panjabi descent.

In my opinion this text is a useful resource for anyone looking to learn more about transfeminine lived experiences within the “Early Days” of transition or for folks transitioning in adulthood. As a graphic medicine text, this collection could be provided to health profession’s educators and administrators as resources for supporting transgender, gender diverse and gender-non-conforming patients and trainees; health profession’s trainees who will ultimately provide care to transgender, gender diverse and gender-non-conforming patients; as well as to transgender, gender diverse and gender-non-conforming patients as bibliotherapy where appropriate within the context of their transition journeys. I’ve found the greatest strength of this work to this end is its short 3-panel format which lends itself to ease of integration into health professional curricula and consumption for busy health professionals, health professions trainees, and patients.

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Harris I. Qureshi (he/him) is a comic artist and medical student at Kansas City University. His interests include medical education research, graphic medicine, primary care, as well as intersectional queer and trans health, including for racialized 2SLGBTQ+ communities and 2SLGBTQ+ survivors of domestic violence.