Abstract

Andrea Lawlor’s (2017) historical picaresque novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl tracks the ephemeral embodiments and identifications of Paul Polydoris, a gender-fluid, shape-shifting anti-hero who adapts to the specificities of queer environments in diverse locations across the U.S. during 1993-1995, a time when gay hedonism, lesbian feminism, queer punk anti-homonormativity, and LGBTQ responses to AIDS combined to make a rich, complex heyday of queer culture. Approaching the novel from a queer ecological/ecofeminist perspective, this paper argues that as a magical, marginal bricoleur whose existence is a deeply felt, fully material experiment in the performative assemblage of selves from biological forms and cultural references, Paul Polydoris exemplifies “organic transgenderism”—a view of gender transitioning that complicates the culture/nature binary, resists anthropocentrism, emphasizes empathetic interrelation with other organisms, and privileges understanding of the complex involvement of biology, culture, and individual will in transition processes. Paul’s body is an enchanted site of meaning that is created in situ and in which he is then positioned to participate in local culture, moving the concept “sense of place” from green trope to queer fantasy of limitless engendering. In his passionate liminal engagement with queer spaces, Paul inhabits a self-directed trans* embodiment that challenges conventional understandings of the “natural” and the “human” while centering appreciation of diversity, modeling a dynamic, queer topophilia.