Becoming Through Memory: (Trans)gender Mnemonics and Trans-corporeality –The Case of Neon Yang’s Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame (2025).

This proposal emerges from the intersection of Stacy Alaimo’s trans-corporeality (2018) and AC Panella’s notion of (trans)gender as a mnemonic device (2021). The former suggests the disruption of the self-contained essentialist nature of a human body existing beyond the world. Alaimo reintroduces the body as a relational and interconnected object that exists in a symbiotic relationship with the world surrounding it. AC Panella’s notion of (trans)gender as a mnemonic device (2021), which, in similar vein to trans-corporeality, challenges the binominal perception of a gendered body. Trans bodies then become singular repositories of social experiences that are transformed by the world they intermesh with. Relaying on the abovementioned concepts I propose a reading of Neon Yang’s novel Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame (2025). Yeva, a biracial dragon slayer, experiences her life through a metal armour and a wooden mask. Those are additional layers of her body through which she can ontologically transcribe and interact with her surroundings. Throughout her life, however, while moving from one of her home countries to another she transforms, shedding those outer layers and consciously interweaving her own self with the world. Thus I propose, that the armour, the mask and the self, become queer mnemonic devices through which Yeva, a repressed individual can metaphorically transition from an agender self-contained body, to a fully realised porous body that does not need external catalysts to completely experience the world. Proposed paper then delves into a larger discussion of how conscious trans-corporeality might engage with the notion of using queerness as a mnemonic device in the process of experiencing the world.