B’ellana Johannx’s Satanic Verses, Book 1: The Fire Principle, or A Guidebook for the New Transfaggot

B‘ellana Johannx declares, “our talmud is the miles of poetry written in our bodies.” Satanic Verses is for those who have been afraid to be who they are and for those who are proud to be who they are. This is a text about the stories we tell ourselves as well as the stories that have been told about us. This is a rebuttal and a proclamation. This book says no while also declaring yes. This book throws away old laws to announce new ones. Hail Satan. – Kenning JP Garcia, author of ROBOT: The Waste Land Reimaged

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B’ellana Johannx’s Satanic Verses: A Guidebook for the New Transfaggot is something of a genreless treatise and assertion of [queer] [trans] life. There is so much happening in this brief collection, that it’s somewhat overwhelming, in a good way—in a challenging and fulfilling way. Satanic Verses is intimacy and vulnerability, violence and subversion. Epic in form, but taking on elements of memoir, interview, and criticism, Johannx’s Guidebook is a godless sermon—a rallying cry to queer femmes to be unapologetically authentic. The blending of the old and new, the sacred and the sinful, create a new Queer scripture, and offer a roadmap to self-acceptance and love. – Caseyrenée Lopez, author of the new gods and heretic bastard

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B’ellana Johannx’s Satanic Verses, Vol. 1 is conjured for all cast-out and beat down queers. Social memes of monstrosity meet the sickening gorgeousness of holyhood in their/her reframing of Lucifer. In her/their reimagining, Johannx finds light and sex and magic in the most neglected places. Johannx’s poems point out that, since all of us queers are already in Pandemonium’s disco, a place “in which daemons / spirits / faggots / saintes / creatures like you and me are immune to the flames,” we might as well DANCE. – Avren Keating, poet