Brown/Trans/Les

You know that feeling when you’re waiting for a book to drop and you just know it’s going to shift something in how you think? That’s the energy surrounding Talia Bhatt’s upcoming Brown/Trans/Les, which is scheduled to arrive on January 26, 2026. This isn’t just another essay collection—it’s the second installment in Bhatt’s Essays on Transfeminism series, and readers have been anticipating it with the kind of hunger that only emerges when a thinker is genuinely pushing boundaries in their field.

If you’ve encountered Bhatt’s first work, Trans/Rad/Fem, you already know what to expect: rigorous, uncompromising analysis paired with a willingness to ask the difficult questions that mainstream discourse often sidesteps. That book attempted to construct a materialist framework for understanding trans women’s oppression—which sounds academic, sure, but what it actually did was provide language and theory for experiences that felt previously unnamed. Brown/Trans/Les is building on that foundation, and early indicators suggest Bhatt is expanding her scope considerably.

What’s particularly generating buzz is the intersectional specificity of this new collection. The title itself signals something important—it’s not just about trans experience, but about Brown trans lesbian experience specifically. There’s a deliberate centering happening here that reflects a move away from the often-whitewashed conversations dominating mainstream trans discourse. Bhatt appears to be insisting on the particularity of her own position and the positions of others like her, rather than flattening diverse experiences into a universal “trans identity.”

The anticipation building toward the January 2026 release speaks volumes about what readers are hungry for: theory that refuses to be palatable, analysis rooted in material reality rather than liberal platitudes, and a voice that centers those typically marginalized within marginal communities.

Here’s what we know so far about the thematic territory Bhatt will be exploring:

• Transfeminism as political practice, not just identity affirmation
• The material conditions shaping brown trans women’s lives and labor
• Lesbian subjectivity within transfeminist frameworks—a crucial intervention that often gets overlooked
• The critique of assimilationist politics that haunts contemporary trans activism
• Sex and sexuality as sites of both oppression and resistance

The landscape for transfeminist writing has been shifting, but there’s still a profound gap where rigorous, uncompromising analysis from trans women of color should be sitting. Bhatt’s work is poised to fill that gap in a way that feels simultaneously theoretically sophisticated and deeply personal. This isn’t detached academic writing—it’s the kind of essay collection that reads like someone thinking through their own survival while simultaneously constructing frameworks for collective liberation.

What makes Brown/Trans/Les so anticipated is that it arrives at a moment when transfeminism itself is being contested from multiple directions. There are those who want to dilute it into simple trans rights advocacy, those who want to separate it from lesbian politics, and those who would rather not reckon with the material dimensions of trans oppression at all. Bhatt’s work refuses all of these compromises. Instead, she appears to be doubling down on the radical potential of transfeminism as a political project rooted in the lives and struggles of the most marginalized.

1. Theoretical rigor – Bhatt doesn’t shy away from dense conceptual work
2. Personal stakes – The essays are clearly written from lived experience, not detached observation
3. Radical ambition – This isn’t reformist politics; it’s asking fundamental questions about liberation
4. Specificity – Brown trans lesbian experience as a particular location of knowledge and resistance

The publishing landscape for independent releases is expanding, and Bhatt’s work is set to demonstrate why that matters. When marginalized thinkers don’t have to filter their ideas through mainstream publishing gatekeepers, the possibilities shift. This book will be independently published, which means the voice you’re getting is unmediated, uncensored, shaped entirely by Bhatt’s vision rather than a publisher’s sense of marketability.

“A trans woman who insists upon her own sex is a function of the total cultural victory of the Gender-Conservative project.” — This kind of statement, which appears in Bhatt’s existing work, should give you a sense of the intellectual terrain you’ll be entering with Brown/Trans/Les.

For anyone invested in feminist theory, gender studies, queer politics, or just honest thinking about liberation, this collection will be essential reading when it drops in January. And for those of us who’ve been waiting for transfeminism to evolve beyond its current iterations—to become more rigorous, more rooted in material analysis, more willing to center the lives of brown and black trans women—this book feels like a significant moment.

The pages are still being finalized, the last edits are happening, and then on January 26, 2026, Brown/Trans/Les will be out in the world. When that happens, it’s worth clearing some time to sit with it properly. This is the kind of work that demands to be read slowly, thought through carefully, and discussed seriously. It’s the kind of book that changes conversations—if we’re brave enough to let it.