Morbid Obsessions by Alison Rumfitt, Frankie Miren
Frankie Miren (The Service) and Alison Rumfitt (Tell Me I’m Worthless) cover the intersections of anti-trans sentiment and sex work stigmatisation in this exploratory, conversational book
"There's a war on, but only some of us know it's happening," says Morgan M. Page in the introduction of Morbid Obsessions. "Frankie Miren and Alison Rumfitt are writing from the trenches.”
The duo, writers of The Service and Tell Me I’m Worthless respectively, come together in this slim volume to consider what it means to write as part of communities under attack: trans people and sex workers. Where, in fiction, is the line between exploring the harmful and humanising it? How do you balance a desire to examine, to explore honestly, but protect yourself from the stratospheric potential onslaught that often awaits?
Mother, Miren’s tale of sex work is one of choice, power, anger, and control, from lonely flats to protests, drawing much from online forums; Rumfitt’s A Unique Case of British Disease literalises anti-trans sentiment through deft and unsettling horror sprung from mundanity. What follows is a full and unfiltered conversation between the two about their work and lives, the connections between them, while underlining they cannot speak to the others’ experience. It’s an open, long-form format that allows for questioning, inviting the reader in – to find hope, anger, humour, rage, and be galvanized all at once.
The book concludes with an interview from two years ago with Natalia Santana Mendes, a trans sex worker from Brazil who passed in 2021. The interview explores the significance of language, her story and more, offering insight, while exploring hostility in unexpected places.
"Please continue to dream, and to celebrate," she says towards the end of the piece. "To live your life, to love, to exist. We have much work to do, but part of this is to care for our community, this is a collective responsibility, without this we have nothing."
The blurb proposes it is a vital conversation about making art a collective struggle. The commonalities that stretch from both sides of Morbid Obsessions are of community, solidarity, of sharing one’s own experience and learning of others' – they sit at the heart of the project, ready to be taken forward.
Cipher Press, 29 Sep, £8.99, all profits donated to Babeworld