by Chris Bergeron (Author), Natalia Hero (Translator)
A genre-bending speculative look at a dark future, Valid shares the story of one trans woman leading a revolution.
This is a mutiny.
If our mutiny is to succeed, I must name things well, without diversion. Lacking this, you will not deviate from your certainties.
Here it is: I am trans.
As in transgression. I have broken genres. I have removed myself from the rules.
I am trans.
As in translation. I have dragged the elements that make up my person from one state to another. My geometry is variable.
And tonight, I am a revolution.
/warning: code red... fetch-query protocol enabled... transmission failed... standby/
Set in a disturbingly transfigured Montreal in the year 2050, Valid is a monologue delivered over the span of eight hours by Christelle, a seventy-year-old trans woman forced to live as a man in order to survive. Speaking to her captor, an ever-more powerful AI, she turns the tables and mounts her own revolution by showing her truest self. Part autofiction, part dystopic speculation on an all-too-possible future characterized by corporate power, ecological collapse, and political havoc, Valid is an ambitious work that is as much philosophical as it is confessional.