Yes, Cupid is Trans – Electric Literature

“What if the word Monster formed a kind of net with which to trawl the wide sea, gathering anything that didn’t resemble the creatures deemed familiar and permitted in your world?”—The Palace of Eros

In this epic rewriting of the myth of Eros and Psyche, Caro de Robertis connects trans and queer histories to ancient mythology. The myth of Eros and Psyche is well-known. Psyche, the youngest of the three daughters, is perceived as the most stunning, the most desired by men. Psyche’s beauty causes such a commotion Aphrodite herself is all like absolutely not and instructs her son, Eros, to shoot his bow of desire at a vile despicable monster to claim her as a wife. Bad boy Eros does not follow Aphrodite’s instructions and falls for our girl Psyche, builds a hidden palace for her full of riches. Psyche can only see her husband at night and although this, at first, proves to be more than she’d ever needed, eventually she yearns for more. The rest of the myth is easily Googleable.

In de Robertis’s The Palace of Eros we have Eros as a shapeshifting body. Eros is now a woman but also more than a woman. “My husband is a woman,” Psyche says when she first meets Eros in the dark. Eros can grow a phallus or change her entire body into a male. The changes in this divine body are seamless. Caro’s prose is magnificent, it incorporates language for a gender expansive body into a myth that is 2000 years old and makes it look easy. It is such a literary gift to see gender expansiveness depicted in an ancient myth with such grace and ease. Plus, a bonus of lesbian processing, loads of queer sex and divine gossip. Caro builds on a long history of trans and queer people rewriting history to expand the notion of what’s possible. They are also building on a Latin American tradition of using myth, magic and fable in fiction.

De Robertis and I have known each other for years and have many times talked at length about the erasure of trans and queer narratives from a larger collective history. Trans and queer history seems to be this niche knowledge that only some people know about, it’s not taught in schools, it’s not easily accessible at the local library (sometimes even banned from the local library). The reality is trans people have lived, loved and fucked since the beginning of times. Yes, we looked different. We had different names. But gender expansive people are part of the larger history of humanity. Period. The Palace of Eros is an incredible and beautiful ode to this history.

And why is our history so threatening? Trans history is a history of possibility and possibility is the enemy of greed and unchecked power under capitalism. Trans history shakes the whole system under which the mother and the father and the holy spirit have been built to keep us all subjugated while the top dudes amass power and wealth at the cost of everyone’s lives. Trans history disrupts the notion that this way of existing is “normal” and opens space for other futures. We are currently being used as a scapegoat. Look over there! The republicans say, it’s a transgender. We are believed to have no history, we are believed to be a trend and in this denying of our history we are being denied basic humanity.

And, now, because of Caro de Robertis’ brilliance, when anyone talks Greek myth and they ask is Eros trans? The response is, yes, she is. She’s one of us.

Julián Delgado Lopera: How did the idea of rewriting the myth of Psyche and Eros come to you? Why make it queer? Why make it trans?  

Caro de Robertis: I have been obsessed with this myth for over 25 years. Something in the subtext of the story that pulled and fascinated me, but I couldn’t put my finger to what it was. During late pandemic, when I was exploring what book to write next, I got the idea of changing Eros—the god of love and desire—into a queer and trans genderfluid identity. Trans people have always existed throughout time, but we haven’t always had the vocabulary or the societal reflection to be able to have those experiences be legible as part of history. Changing Eros’ gender and her identity opened the story in a completely different way. It revealed other questions I wanted to explore: what does it mean to have a love, a passion or a desire that can only take place in the dark? How can desire catalyze a journey of liberation? What does it mean to have society deemed your desire and body monstrous? Although these elements belong to an ancient myth, a story at least two thousand years old, it holds elements that feel urgently relevant to our contemporary existence.

JDL: On the first Psyche calls attention to the ways the retelling of stories—legends and myths in particular—omit parts that are unfamiliar, different.  Why is it important to insert trans/gender expansive bodies into history?

CR: Official histories have systematically erased transness and queerness from the record. Inserting queer and trans bodies into history and into the registry of our collective myths and stories is essential to knowing who we collectively are. This is my sixth novel. I spent many years working on five different novels set in Latin America where I grappled with the systemic erasure and silencing of queer and trans realities in Latin American culture and history. Writing these books only deepened my sense of urgency that we need trans and queer stories looking back through histories to recalibrate our sense of who we have been as society, in order to see more who we are.

JDL: There’s something very profound in Eros’ shifting not only of her gender but her genitals. As someone who is trans, this literal change and capacity of Eros’ body to transform felt special. One of my favorite parts of the book are the moments Eros grows a penis, the moments she shifts from being a woman to a man and the moments she inhabits both genders. All of it felt very seamless. How was it to write this shapeshifting body and to find the language and craft to incorporate it into the story.

CR: It was incredibly joyful and exhilarating to write Eros’ character into being including her relationship with her body, which is a divine body. She has the power to shift her outward expression, to grow a penis, to present as male. These are qualities materialized in this magical context but are qualities that are true to a trans experience. We are shapeshifters and that is part of our power, our vastness and richness.  Dominant society pathologizes what it means to be trans and have a transformative or fluid relationship to your own gender and body but in fact you and I know trans experience is actually the opposite, it is an incredible richness. Also, this is very much in harmony with what is true in Greek myth. Ovid’s Metamorphosis, for instance, in which people are metamorphosing their bodies all the time, sometimes at will, sometimes against their will, is an incredible record of bodily change in ancient literature.

JDL: Psyche continues to call Eros her “husband” even when she first finds out Eros is a woman. “My husband was not a man,” Psyche says. Psyche also comes up with a name for Eros, “Pteron.” Talk about the choice of playing with gendered language and creating new language, which is a very queer craft choice.

CR: One avenue of research for this book was classical scholarship and classical literature.  Another avenue of research was queer and feminist theory. Books like Female Masculinity by Jack Halberstam, Queer Latinidad by Juana María Rodríguez, and Female Husbands by Jen Manion which looked at the historical record of people assigned female at birth who lived presenting as men and as husbands. All these books inspired me as I imagined how language might exist within the world of this book. I wanted to reflect and celebrate the incredible richness and range of experiences that people have with the trans and/or genderqueer phallus. People assigned female at birth have various relationships to phallic energy and this has existed within queer communities throughout time. Butches have phallic energy, transmac folks have phallic energy, nonbinary and genderqueer people, two spirit people and also femmes, have a relationship to phallic energy. In my attempt to create linguistic and bodily innovation in this book I was really drawn on an incredibly rich legacy of queer inventiveness and innovation.

JDL: Because I’m gay, I was drawn to Psyche’s revelation after experiencing queer sex and the different feelings attached to it, desire, shame, want. There’s something here which a lot of queer people experience around how unknown the world of queer intimacy is to the mainstream collective imaginary. Queer sex gets a lot of airtime on these pages, why?

CR: As fiction writers we convey what we value in part by what we center, what we give airtime, breath and space. Within a literary context there can be the idea that sex and the erotic are a less serious topic, which is a very heteronormative and white supremacist idea. It is a double standard because Henry Miller and Philip Roth were taken very seriously as literary writers when they wrote into erotic desire but when a queer or female person writes into the nature of desire and sexual expression it can be condescended to. Erotic desire, erotic joy and erotic expression are sites of knowledge, sites of self-development, growth, self-discovery and liberation.  

JDL: Psyche’s revelation mirrors the experience of many queer people regarding queer sex. It is not only about the act of fucking itself but this larger shift in the paradigm of what’s possible in the world.  After sex with Eros, Psyche questions everything about the world around her. This is such a queer experience. The power of queer sex is well beyond the fucking. There is this shifting in the way we understand the world and what’s possible, which is why queer sex is so persecuted.

CR: In a queer context, fucking can be a source of incredible power, of healing, of liberation. Joyful queer fucking is dangerous to the dominant system that’s designed to keep us diminished and silent. There is so much knowledge that can come through our desires, through our bodies. Before she understood herself to be queer, Psyche experienced patriarchy in very palpable ways. Because she is perceived as beautiful her father wants to get a suitor for her that will earn him privileges in society. He sees Psyche as a piece of his property at the expense of her wellbeing. That’s in direct opposition to Psyche’s desires and so her desires become a radical act.

JDL: Psyche and Eros’ relationship complicates after some time. When she first arrives to the palace, Psyche is overwhelmed with joy at the freedom and riches even if she can only see Eros, her only companion, at night, in the dark. Towards the middle of the story the palace feels like a “queered” extension of the patriarchal world Psyche left in which Eros, who is written as the more masculine one, sets all the rules. Talk about the relationship to power and gender between Psyche and Eros inside the Palace

CR: The original myth has a rupture in the relationship baked into it where Psyche experiences great passion, joy and satisfaction but then starts to want to see her husbands’ face, bringing light into the room that she’s been told needs to stay dark. This already built-in tension allowed me to explore the subtext of what it means to pursue freedom and autonomy within the context of intimate connection. Because we’re human, dynamics can come up that can urge us to shrink ourselves for someone that we love. How do we balance love, passion and connection with our own desire for autonomy? This is complicated in a queer context because for many of us, especially when our coming out is challenging and we’ve experienced familial homophobia, we would love to believe that all we must do is come out, express our desire and passion for a person we’re really into and then we’re in queer paradise. As someone who has experienced familial homophobia and had a complete rupture with most of my family of origin, I have a lot of heart for people who are in that part of the experience. Because we want to find home and refuge in queer space. And we can find our home and refuge in queer space but there are other things we must grapple with. In the case of the Eros, her desire to keep things in the dark, to keep the relationship hidden and shrouded is coming from a place of self-protection. This is her solution to the homophobia and transphobia of her world, and it reflects one of the pathways some queer people pursue. Sometimes we must keep a part of ourselves secret to be safe. And yet, Psyche wants to come out into the light, she wants to stand taller, wants to expand her universe. The story brings up a kind of grappling with the costs and potentialities of hiding versus speaking out and standing tall, concealing and revealing.     

JDL: In the story, it is through song that tradition and indigenous ancestral knowledge is passed down to Psyche, which is also a way that histories of trans people are passed.

CR: I set the book in southern Italy right after colonization, like two generations after, so that Psyche is a descendant of colonized people, she has a relationship to indigeneity, to the land, to lost languages and it allowed me to weave in some themes that are meaningful to me as a Latin American writer. There can be a notion that the retelling of Greek myths somehow belongs to white writers. But if you think about the tradition of magical realism that we draw on as Latin American writers, that is a literary vein through which we can have a great deal to say when it comes to reimagining parables and myth. I first read One Hundred Years of Solitude when I was thirteen years old. I’ve been preparing for this project for more than twenty years. Latin American literature is one of the most powerful streams of global literature in terms of reimagining reality through the lens of what is thought as magical.

JDL: “Monster” and “monstrosity” are brought up many times throughout the book to imply gender difference and any deviation from the normative. And yet you shape this idea of the “monster” by complicating it, giving it a different form. Right now, the drag queen bans, and trans bans are framing trans people as monsters. Deeming communities and an art form that is unfamiliar to many people, bodies that are different from the norm, and assigning this monstrosity and therefore fear. Because we must fear the monster. We’re an easy target, an escape goat. I see a “monster” reclaiming too within trans communities as “monster” continues to be a trope weaponized against us.

CR: Monstrosity was used in the original story, which is part of the reason why this myth stayed with me below my consciousness for almost three decades. That something as powerful, passionate and beautiful as erotic desire and fulfillment could be monstrous. That notion of monstrosity has been weaponized in society, not only 2000 years ago but in my life. Monstrosity is a projection of fears onto trans and queer people and then there is our truth which is that we are amazing. And one of the ways we are amazing and rich and beautiful is in our possibility of many permutations and iterations. In the artistry that goes into our bodies, our identities, the way we move and breathe and exist in space. This conversation about monstrosity reminds me of Tupili Lea Arellano, a Chicanx elder on the trans spectrum that I interviewed for an oral history project. Many times during the interview they said we are shapeshifters and that is a powerful medicine. Trans people should root in and own and stand in that power.