trans girl suicide museum

2019. This book was everything to me, because it introduced the concept of the suicide museum, which was a life-saving concept for me. The basic idea is to put all your suicidal thoughts into a museum. So for example, I picture an animatronic me lying in fetal position on a bed rocking back forth saying “I don’t want to live” over and over again. Now like mindfulness or meditation, I can step back and observe my thoughts. They’re just thoughts. I can have compassion for my suffering, and the suffering of all trans people who might be in the suicide museum. So I feel simultaneously removed from my suicidal thoughts and connected to the trans community/not alone. This makes actual suicide much less likely to occur. Thank you show more Hannah Baer. I wish someone would make this a graphic novel or even a play or movie somehow.

The book also speaks a lot about privilege. Baer frankly says she is rich. While not rich, I experience a lot of white privilege in my health care and the relative ease of my transition and support of my family friends and community. It was a good opportunity to reflect on that.

Re: Ketamine, I don’t use drugs, but it was interesting to hear about that part of our community. I bet there’s not so much literature about that yet, so it’s good to have out there.

If you’re into memes it gets really deep into them, which was new to me. I’m much older than the author, but I learned a ton about memes and that was fun.

I thought it was a thought-provoking, interesting, life-saving, well-written little gem. show less

i disagree w so much of what this author says, i dislike so much of this authors voice, i dont think this is very well written or organized, i dont think this is a particularly good or important publication

but FUCK this is one of those rare books that deeply captures a part of me, from however oblique an angle, in a staggering wholeness

im a bit frustrated and upset at how well a not-insignificant part of me is represented in these pages

all the more reason for me to keep a copy on my bookshelf

edit may 2026:
there's a lot of trans books where they exist as much as discourse-objects and ciphers for your personal neuroses about "the trans community" as they do as actual texts. maybe it's just me who does this. but i find i have a hard time telling if i like this or i'm just *supposed* to like it. or conversely, whether i actually hate or im just *supposed* to hate it. i got all caught up in these loops and become unable to articulate my feelings in a public setting for fear of revealing my naivete (??? who ever cares about that it's an online book review).

anyways there are some passages i connected deeply to but it's also kind of just someone's diary. it's hard to critically judge when it's so unfiltered. to a certain extent show more this couldn't possibly be *bad* right, because it appears on the surface to be a true reflection of experience.

original review:

very adult book. ive owned this for a couple years and i keep coming back to it and flipping through random passages. hannah baer is very good at understanding and analyzing the dynamics of her life as a rich white trans woman deeply entrenched in bohemian life (and by extension, my life as well). i admire her patient thoughtful analysis quite a lot. i guess the question is whether someone's personal diary entries can constitute a book worth reading for others. show less

Am I a bad queer person because I'm monogamous and don't really fuck with drugs? Cause that's sort of the vibe I got from this lol
Interesting insights but the sort of terminally online presentation of everything really falls flat and maybe writing sober might help?