Jackie Kay’s
Trumpet, published in 1998 with Picador to considerable acclaim, was an early trailblazer for queer Black British fiction, foreshadowing such works as Bernardine Evaristo’s more recent Queer Black British novels,
Mr Loverman(2013) and
Girl, Woman, Other(2019). In the year of its publication,
Trumpetwas awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize, followed by the Authors’ Club First Novel Award in 2000, a Lambda Literary Award in the Transgender category, and a spot on the shortlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, also in 2000. Mostly set in London in 1997,
Trumpet’s plot centres on Joss Moody, Jazz musician and child of African-Scottish parents. Assigned female at birth, readers encounter Joss’s self-identity as male when the story begins.
The plot is
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Citation: Koegler, Caroline. "Trumpet". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 March 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10263, accessed 21 November 2024.]
