For Benedict Nguyễn, a career in the arts—as a dancer, creative producer, and writer—requires vocational dexterity, the juggling of various jobs she refers to as “freelance flailing.” (In fact, when we first met in a writing network a few years ago, she was stepping away from a role in arts administration to teach English in Paris for a year.) Her travails at the forefront of the gig economy inform her criticism about labor and cultural production; it’s no surprise these concerns also surface in her fiction, the writing of which provides her a way to “think about the world from a different point of view.”
Nguyễn’s debut novel, Hot Girls with Balls, is a bracing confection, a dishy satire that serves a portion of truth alongside generous helpings of joy and good humor. It’s the story of loving couple Six and Green, Asian American trans women and stars of the men’s professional volleyball league, who must navigate personal jealousies, professional rivalries, and a rabid online chorus of fans and transphobes as they seek to secure a place in the celebrity firmament. I recently video chatted with Benedict about volleyball, capitalism, and performativity on and off the court.
Doris W. Cheng
First, why volleyball? You have a background in dance—did your dance training inform the way you viewed and wrote about the sport of volleyball?
Benedict Nguyễn
Indoor volleyball fascinates me because of the team dynamics, the verbal and nonverbal exchanges happening in every play, all the time, among players on the same team as well as across the net. [Dance gave me an appreciation for] the biomechanics of how volleyball players move and the range of physicalities that they have to access to do their sport. I just get hypnotized watching.
Doris W. Cheng
I have to admit, I enjoy watching dance more than watching volleyball. Though I appreciate it more after reading your writing about it.
Benedict Nguyễn
Thank you for that compliment. And also, that makes me sad because I love volleyball so much.
Doris W. Cheng
One of the book’s defining features is its chorus of online voices—strangers’ comments on various social media platforms—observing, dissecting, and judging every action of Six and Green’s. They reflect the discourse about trans women of color: the racism, sexualization, and transmisogyny. But the voices are offset by Six and Green’s ownership of their identities as hot girls “who could both destroy you with [their] womanhood and beat you at sports.” Can you talk about this tension?
Benedict Nguyễn
I’ve thought of it as kind of a tussle at the net, if you will, between Six and Green’s story and a doomscrolling Greek chorus trying to make claims about [their] narrative. These claims include speculation, wild leaps of imagination, and a lot of judgment, which I feel can be one of the perverse pleasures of doomscrolling and reading discourse.
Doris W. Cheng
Isn’t it a choice? Whether to engage, or whether to turn off the screen and walk away?
Benedict Nguyễn
That’s another tension I’m exploring in giving these parallel narratives equal weight. What do I mean by juxtaposing them on the page? I’m making both narratives material [because] things that are on the Internet also have material impacts on people’s lives. The algorithmic information that spurs on discourses about XYZ are Web 2.0, 3.0 materiality.
Doris W. Cheng
Six and Green’s world runs—as does ours—on capitalism within an attention economy. They are celebrity athletes and also businesswomen—
Benedict Nguyễn
Every celebrity is.
Doris W. Cheng
Right. I was struck by how Six and Green completely get it. They’re businesswomen whose “lover time had been subsumed by girl boss time.” Both women understand how to commodify their identities, how to deliberately transact those identities to gain social and economic power. Like, if anyone is going to exploit them for financial gain, it’s them.
Benedict Nguyễn
Oh, I think Six and Green do get it, but they don’t get it equally. Thank goodness Six has Green to spell it out for her and push her to make more of her social capital. Six is at times more reluctant or more oblivious to that potential than Green, who’s a bit more strategic. But—
Doris W. Cheng
I never sensed any judgment though.
Benedict Nguyễn
Yeah, much love to them both. But even though they’re both professional athletes with well-paying jobs and famous, I think a scarcity mindset affects everyone in capitalism. Even in their positions, they’re attracted to a logic that affects people with far less social influence. In our economy, one moment of virality can be capitalized upon for longer-term stability, and our social platforms require us to game the algorithms in order to optimize our potential for future work—employment, gigs, sponsorships.
Doris W. Cheng
I enjoyed how much the book echoes our own world—from SpaceTime calls and Instagraph posts, to the sports ecosystem and celebrity parasocialism, to the COVIS virus and the tragic murders of Asian American women. How did you negotiate the tension between the real and the imagined?
Benedict Nguyễn
I was inspired by real-life events and real-life apps. But at the same time, I pictured the novel in an alternate universe where two conditions are met that don’t exist in ours: One, that volleyball has become an incredibly popular sport in the US. [Two], that the macro structures of racism and trans misogyny would bend to allow Six and Green to grow from high school varsity players to professional athletes. And I didn’t want to reify the hegemony of big tech apps so by riffing on names, I’m keeping the perspective of the novel at a slant.
Doris W. Cheng
Six and Green’s love is real, but so is Green’s understanding that their success depends on being a couple. Green’s grief for the murdered trans women is real, but so is her knowledge she can use the tragedy to elevate her own profile. She says, “They would end transmisogyny in all forms, from murderous hate crime to bigoted thinking. And if she made it to 1 million followers with her abilities, maybe Lulumelon would get back to [her agent].” Activism is inextricably linked to commerce, earnestness goes hand-in-hand with calculation. Do you think it’s possible to draw a line between performance and authenticity?
Benedict Nguyễn
The performer in me doesn’t think the distinction between performance and authenticity is a helpful question to consider. Green is swept up by very real grief for the tragedy that happens and feels caught up in the sudden opportunities that come her way to be a spokeswoman about racism and trans misogyny. And I don’t think she’s truly calculating her dollars, I think she is grappling with that tension where she recognizes she has an opportunity to show up, in what feels like to her a very meaningful, impactful way for her community.
Doris W. Cheng
It feels incumbent to talk about sports given the recent NCAA rule barring trans women athletes from competing in women’s sports. The issue has been a lightning rod for bigotry, with rhetoric that’s demonizing and dehumanizing. Your book places Six and Green on men’s teams while acknowledging “biology and bigotry were insurmountable made-up forces” and they’d “sacrificed their bodies to the kind of puberty their sport demanded of them.”
Benedict Nguyễn
Part of the initial premise was not just what if I had two trans women athletes, but what if I had two trans women athletes who willfully chose to play for the men’s league? I think that’s an inherently pessimistic premise because they’re already anticipating the difficulty they would have if they tried to play for the women’s league. Six and Green’s lives and careers depart from [our reality] because when trans women in our timeline have tried to receive a baseline level of acceptance and respect in women’s leagues, [the result] is unfortunately so predictable.
Doris W. Cheng
Six and Green’s male teammates are clueless, but they generally treat them with respect—
Benedict Nguyễn
Or at least indifference, which is not the worst thing. Within the logic of the novel, Six and Green’s teammates are less threatened by them because they’re placing them lower in the patriarchal hierarchy. So, in a sense, it’s easier to tolerate them as teammates. And then, they are famous, and the social capital that they bring to each of their teams is not lost on their teammates. So that also affords them some power.
Doris W. Cheng
You write, “People had gender feelings all the time. Because Six and Green proclaimed their feelings assuredly, they made it normal.” In your book, transition is normalized, glass ceilings are shattered, and though transphobia and hate exist, your narrator sails over the terribleness with a gentle grace I found comforting. Was that your goal?
Benedict Nguyễn
I wanted to make discourse fun again! The stakes aren’t real—it’s a novel that I made up.
FICTION
Hot Girls with Balls
By Benedict Nguyễn
Catapult
Published July 1, 2025
