Abstract
This essay brings together queer, ecocritical, and narratological reading strategies to interpret the persistent spatial ambiguity and complicated intertextual narrative form of Shola von Reinhold’s LOTE (2020) as essential to its representation of a Black trans femme experience. Our interpretation of the novel bucks the critical trend of reading the “authentic” or realistic content of trans narratives and instead privileges its various narrative resources and the ways in which they encourage readers to model and imaginatively inhabit the protagonist’s Black trans femme experience. This reading not only helps position LOTE as a trans narrative, but also builds out a specifically trans narratology—and, by extension, a richer understanding of trans fiction—and contributes to the urgent project of diversifying environmental imaginations and experiences, especially those of marginalized communities.