Topographies of Gendered Violence: (Trans)Forming Hospitality in Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars

In this article, I explore Ryka Aoki’s science fiction novel, Light from Uncommon Stars (2021) and its depiction of social and spatial violence against trans* women in a North American context. I contend that Aoki presents instances of what Derrida describes as hostipitality, a blending of hospitality and hostility, to denounce, through speculation, the extreme vulnerability of trans* racialized women in the United States, and the way in which patterns of exclusion and abjectification can be (re)produced in queer spaces. Aoki’s depiction of spatiality and failed hospitality thus highlights the unique (and often ignored) forms of violence experienced by trans* racialized women through the inclusion of science fiction elements.