In Trans Exploits Jian Neo Chen explores the cultural practices created by trans and gender-nonconforming artists and activists of color. They argue for a radical rethinking of the policies and technologies of racial gendering and assimilative social programming that have divided LGBT communities and communities of color along the lines of gender, sexuality, class, immigration status, and ability. Focusing on performance, film/video, literature, digital media, and other forms of cultural expression and activism that track the displaced emergences of trans people of color, Chen highlights the complex and varied responses by trans communities to their social dispossession. Through these responses, trans of color cultural workers such as performance artist Yozmit, writer Janet Mock, and organizer Jennicet Gutiérrez challenge dominating perceptions and institutions that kill, confine, police, and discipline trans people.

"“Trans Exploits is a valuable meditation on unsettling and redefining the relationship between trans of color culture and technologies of representation. . . . This text charts numerous points of entry for any reader interested in the converging histories of US expansion, dispossession, and detention.”" - TSQ

"“The biggest strength of Trans Exploits lies in Chen’s deft ability to unite such a range of examples. It is testament to the book’s methodological intervention: trans exploits might thus be seen as a term to capture the different creative and strategic responses to racialized and gendered forms of power, surveillance, and regulation.”" - GLQ

"“Chen deploys trans of color as always in flux, as in relation with others, as a praxis of solidarity, and as refusal of all colonial and capitalist logics. . . . Remarkably, as Chen navigates the vast temporal and spatial frames, without conflating one context/community into another, they carefully historicize and contextualize each contemporary artist and their trans embodiments.”" - American Quarterly