RIP Rachel Pollack: August 17, 1945 – April 7, 2023
Beloved trans activist, renowned science fiction and fantasy author, skilled tarot reader, and the creator of the first transgender superhero for DC ComBeloics’, Rachel Pollack, passed at the age of 77 on April 7, 2023, from a form of cancer that invades the lymphatic system known as Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Pollack’s wife, Judith Zoe Matoff, announced her passing via Facebook, expressing that, “Rachel will continue to be a Light in this world and in the next, she will continue to inspire so many of our beloved Tarot community, the Science Fiction and Fantasy community, the Comics community, and the Transgender community for whom she shared so much respect and care.” The post was then shared on Twitter by Pollack’s close friend of 38 years, Neil Gaiman.
Having undergone gender-affirming procedures in her early 20s, Pollack was born in Brooklyn, NY, and began advocating for trans rights when she moved to England following her transition.
She is recognized as one of the earliest trans activists and was a member of a trans group associated with the Gay Liberation Front. Roz Kaveney, a writer and activist who also contributed to the manifesto, states that, “Rachel was a crystallizing force in the trans movement and so many other areas, she was perpetually an inspirational figure and was one of the first professional trans writers who had a career while out and proved that it was possible to do that.”
Kate Godwin, a.k.a. Coagula, is the iconic trans superhero character created by Pollack for the Doom Patrol comic in the 1990s. The comic discussed people who had problems with their bodies or physical appearance making the inclusion of Godwin’s character, her identity, and her overall experiences a very informative attribute of the story. Pulling inspiration from Pollack’s own experiences, Godwin’s role in the comic defined one of the inmost trans experiences expressed within a mainstream comic to this day.
Gaiman stated that< “Rachel was a beloved writer of fantasy, but I prefer to describe her as a magical realist, she wrote these wonderful books of heightened reality and magical worlds where she would concretize metaphor.” Pollack wrote four novels and seven short fiction stories and was even the recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction in 1989 for her novel Unquenchable Fire.
Her book titled Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom embodies her affinity for tarot and ideas of mythology and esoteric traditions and their relation to the symbolism and ideas found behind each tarot card. Pollack also designed her own tarot decks and was a proponent of the women’s spirituality movement, advocating for the inclusion of trans women.
