In the broader LGBTQ+ community lexicon, “carrying” means to act in an exaggerated, over-the-top manner—think being extra, or too much in a certain moment or situation. The phrase originated in the drag and ballroom scene built by the Black and Latino queer and trans community. In that context, it can also reference someone who is doing what needs to be done to carry a group or hold a performance together. Calling someone “carrying” can be a genuine compliment: admiration for a heightened, convincing, theatrical performance. “Carrying” is an appreciation for spectacle—acknowledging that same appetite that runs through drag and camp performance. “Carrying” is the use of language that rewards the act of knowing how much is too much.
In Samantha Josephs’ novel, Carrying, “carrying” moves beyond mere suggestions and symbols. On a linguistic level, “carrying” becomes embodied language. It is an entanglement of words and the meaning of those words on the physical body and its experience. Martha, the main character of Carrying, is a trans woman with a husband and stepdaughter who don’t know she is trans. In the opening scene of the novel, Martha is at the butcher’s shop placing a particular order: “Could I also get a quarter pound of beef liver? […] And do you have pig’s blood?” When the butcher asks if she is making blood sausage, she smiles and says it’s for an old family recipe. These are the props she needs to sell her performance of staging a miscarriage: “The beef liver is perfect, a small amorphous shape about the size of her big toe.” Her only misgivings about this theatricality are that she had to ruin a beloved dress and burn the chicken she was making for dinner.
Martha is the poster-woman for domesticity. She wants nothing more than to run an immaculate household. She has dinners ready for her husband, Leon, and has mastered school functions for her step-daughter, Enid. The only person who knew her before marriage was her doctor and longtime friend, Roger—who has secrets of his own. It is ironic that to the traditional family-values crowd, Martha would be considered perfect. Carrying is a novel of satire (not a satire aimed at the trans community), one that pokes a gentle finger in the eye of “mainstream” society, one that says you think you know who we are and what’s best for us… In one sense, the novel is one of ontological process: the trans woman becomes the trad wife. Carrying carries within its pages biting humor and an exploration of becoming.
In her essay, “More Lessons from a Starfish: Prefixial Flesh and Transspeciated Selves,” Eva Hayward Howard uses the starfish to show how bodies can regenerate and heal and also question how they transform: “Do not some starfish regenerate themselves from injury? […] Is transexual transformation also regenerative?” The idea of prefixial flesh, the idea that the body is a shifting, unstable space—a space of becoming rather than a fixed object. Martha’s surgical cutting, removal of the phallus, is not a loss, but a moment (an impetus) for growth and regeneration. And think about the power of the prefix Trans…it opens up a dynamic space for change before adding a suffix. The body is viewed as unfixed, fluid. It is open to alteration, refuses traditional boundaries. To be trans, especially in Carrying, is to transcend, evolve, and surpass societal/traditional norms. Transgender, to transcending. Martha is becoming a woman; more so, she is becoming a mother.
The real action of the novel happens when Martha’s palate turns, and everything starts to taste like garbage. Chicken, coffee, steak. All of it tastes rotten to Martha. Her body starts to rebel in other ways, too: first migraines, followed by teeth falling out, and hair loss. What Martha discovers, to everyone’s shock, is that she’s pregnant.
In Carrying, Martha’s physical changes (becoming pregnant) echo the way she/we speak, feel, and imagine our anatomy—Martha’s feelings, Martha’s desires. Flesh and language exist and interact in a shared environment. Words and stories aren’t just descriptors of the body; instead, they are active agents that shape physical existence. Martha’s body no longer accepts what we consider a regular diet; instead, she needs to feed on meat that’s turned, that’s so rotten it stinks up a spare bedroom, leaving Enid asking questions. Martha takes late-night drives to a warehouse where she joins others in a feast of fetid meat and gasoline enemas.
In “Lessons from a Starfish,” Hayward writes about prefixial rippling, how prefixes like trans- (across, beyond) and re- (again, anew) form an active relationship that “ripples” across fixed ideas, disrupting what we think we know about language. In the same way, Josephs is disrupting fixed ideas of trans woman, of mother. Martha feels a sting when a doctor “downgrades” her to a parent instead of a mother; she feels pride when Enid decides to call her “mom.”
The end of Carrying acts as a bookend to the beginning: Martha back in a butcher shop placing another specific order. But after the events leading to the novel’s climax, Martha has changed again. Martha, like all of us, is part of a world that is in a constant state of refiguring. Martha, like all of us, will continue to find her body entangled with language and experiences that continue to form rippling relationships that break and distort normative traditions.
FICTION
By Samantha Josephs
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Published October 06, 2026
