A random collection of over 1910 books and audiobooks authored by or about my transgender, intersex sisters, and gender-nonconforming persons all over the world. I read some of them, and I was inspired by some of them. I met some of the authors and heroines, some of them are my best friends, and I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing some of them. If you know of any transgender biography that I have not covered yet, please let me know.
Original title: "Liberdade Ainda Que Profana" (Freedom Even If Profane) by Ruddy Pinho.
When we turn to the literature of trans authorship in Brazil, we inevitably arrive at Ruddy Pinho, who in 1980 debuted on the literary scene with the poetic biographical work Eu, Ruddy. In that period Ruddy did not yet recognize herself as a woman, nor did she bring this issue explicitly to her writing, which only occurred after the publication of her second autobiography, Liberdade ainda que profana (1998), in which she celebrates her 35-year career as a hairdresser, and she identifies as a woman.
Ruddy Pinho, also known as “A Maravilhosa”, was a celebrated transgender hairdresser from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She was known for her work with famous clients, including Susana Vieira and Marilia Pêra. Ruddy Pinho made a significant contribution to the hairdressing industry, including creating the “lioness cut” that marked the career of singer Simone Bittencourt and was widely copied in the 1980s.
1998,
Brazil,
Portuguese,
Ruddy Pinho,
Full title: "Human Sex Change and Sex Reversal: Transvestism and Transsexualism" by David Brez Carlisle.
"Over a period of forty years, Dr. Carlisle has examined and interviewed several thousand sexually dysphoric persons, transsexuals and transvestites. This book provides an analysis of the mass of data resulting from this work, illustrated by verbatim accounts."
The book covers some chapters on Transvestism: under-dressing; compulsive under-dressing; ritual transvestism; compulsive transvestism; fetishism; fetishistic transvestism; heterosexual (non-fetishistic) transvestites; as well as Transvestite Prostitution, transvestite streetwalkers, transvestite escort services, and finally Transsexualism, the other end of the spectrum.
1998,
David Brez Carlisle,
English,
Full title: "Jan Morris (Writers of Wales)" by Paul Clements.
"This is the first full-length study of Jan Morris, one of Britain's foremost travel essayist and popular historians. It takes a critical look at a unique writer who after spending more than forty years as a man, underwent a sex-change in the 1970s and became a woman.
The book outlines Morris's early life and education as James. It focuses on his early journalistic career when in 1953, as The Times correspondent, he took part in the British conquest of Everest and scooped the world with his reports. Morris's writings span nearly fifty years. Since the 1950s she has been a major figure in journalism and travel writing in both Britain and the United States.
1998,
English,
Jan Morris,
Paul Clements,
UK,
Wales,
Full title: "Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes" by Don Kulick.
"In this dramatic and compelling narrative, anthropologist Don Kulick follows the lives of a group of transgendered prostitutes (called travestis in Portuguese) in the Brazilian city Salvador. Travestis are males who, often beginning at ages as young as ten, adopt female names, clothing styles, hairstyles, and linguistic pronouns. More dramatically, they ingest massive doses of female hormones and inject up to twenty liters of industrial silicone into their bodies to create breasts, wide hips, and large thighs and buttocks.
Despite such irreversible physiological changes, virtually no travesti identifies herself as a woman. Moreover, travestis regard any male who does so as mentally disturbed.
Kulick analyzes the various ways travestis modify their bodies, explores the motivations that lead them to choose this particular gendered identity, and examines the complex relationships that they maintain with one another, their boyfriends, and their families. Kulick also looks at how travestis earn their living through prostitution and discusses the reasons prostitution, for most travestis, is a positive and affirmative experience."
1998,
Brazil,
Don Kulick,
English,
Full title: "... mom, I need to be a girl" by Just Evelyn.
"Phyllis Randolph Frye says, "I remember when Just Evelyn contacted me in 1994 or so for legal help for her teenage transsexual child, and I could give her none, other than strategies and role models, to encourage her to push the system to work for her daughter. And push she did.
Just Evelyn's book about her new daughter Danielle will join my personal list of four other books - boiled down after 23 years of out activism that I will recommend to folks like her to read. Actually, this is a must-read for ALL parents of ANY transgendered child of ANY age. It is heartwarming with touches of humor, insight, guidance and things to avoid. It is chatty and very readable.
1998,
English,
Just Evelyn,
Full title: "Second Skins" by Jay Prosser.
"Do we need bodies for sex? Is gender in the head or in the body? In Second Skins Jay Prosser reveals the powerful drive that leads men and women literally to shed their skins and--in flesh and head--to cross the boundary of sex. Telling their story is not merely an act that comes after the fact, it's a force of its own that makes it impossible to forget that stories of identity inhabit autobiographical bodies.
In this stunning first extensive study of transsexual autobiography, Jay Prosser examines the exchanges between body and narrative that constitute the phenomenon of transsexuality. Showing how transsexuality's somatic transitions are spurred and enabled by the formal transitions of narrative, Prosser uncovers a narrative tradition for transsexual bodies."
1998,
English,
Jay Prosser,
Original title: "M/K autsajderzy" (M/F outsiders) by Aleksander Sokołowski.
A touching story about the fate of two people who have one thing in common: not accepting their own gender. Besides, everything separates them. He is a mannered, narcissistic student of pedagogy. To respond to the complexes plaguing him, he begins a bizarre game of the "other sex".
She is a transsexual, a simple girl born in a male body, for whom the issue of her difference is a matter of life and death. At first separate, in the further part of the plot their fates intertwine into an inseparable whole. What will come of it, you will find out at the very end of the book.
1998,
Aleksander Sokołowski,
Polish,
Original title: "Walking in Between" by Ela Mergels.
Ela Mergels published her book "walking in between" in 1998 with photos of German transsexuals. In it, she not only shows the usual portrait photos, but also tries to capture the living environment: the dreary high-rise housing estate, the wall with the souvenir photos, the bathroom with the cosmetics and the dumbbells next to the bed.
The result is an authentic snapshot that gives an insight into the lives and impressions of the lives of these trans women and trans men. And that's exactly where the difference to many other photographers who turn to the topic of transgender people lies: nothing glamorous, no travesty art, but also no tragedies, but - lived normality.
1998,
Ela Mergels,
German,
Full title: "A Two-Tiered Existence" by Samantha Kane.
Let me quote some excerpts from the review by Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH: "This whirlwind autobiography of the once-upon-a-time business magnate and football entrepreneur Sam Hashimi, who in the mid-1990s became the sultry Samantha Kane, is no less than a whistlestop tour of her life. It is quite fascinating that a Muslim man, father of two, engineer, and close friend of the Saudi royal family should leave all those privileges behind to become a Kensington girl."
"Sam, who had everything going for him as a man, may seem to some to have thrown it all away in order to become a woman, but her relentless desire to succeed may lead her in directions that we await to see in the future. The terrible separation from her children, which renders her heartbroken, is extremely sad and leaves the reader with a feeling that perhaps she can never be happy."
1998,
English,
Samantha Kane,
Original title: "Muito Prazer: Roberta Close" (Much Pleasure: Roberta Close)
Anyone looking for celebrity biographies to delve into scandalous topics will certainly be disappointed in this book, but not much. Those who reject volumes of scientific information believing that reading them is always tedious may miss this book. But you will regret it. In 'Much Pleasure: Roberta Close', Lúcia Rito managed to bring together exact doses of scandal and science to reconstruct the amazing trajectory of a human being who aroused the curiosity of an entire country.
In the best tradition of biographies of Hollywood stars or members of the British royal family. Lúcia tells everything, everything, about the life of the transgender woman who leaves Brazil breathless every time she makes it to the cover of a magazine, appears on television, is featured in a social column or appears at a carnival party.
1998,
Brazil,
Lucia Rito,
Portuguese,
Roberta Close,
Full title: "S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes"
"Through an examination of the experience of transsexuals, this book enhances understanding of how gender can and does function in powerful, complex, and subtle ways. The author, who has herself been surgically reassigned, has conducted extensive interviews with transsexuals from many walks of life. Her personal experiences, which inform this book, have given her access to her subjects that others would likely be denied.
While highlighting how the gender identity of transsexuals relates to hormonal and surgical changes in the body as well as to changes in dress, the book investigates the pressures and motivations to conform to expected gender roles, and the ways in which these are affected by social, educational, and professional status. Differences in the experiences of those who change from male to female and those who change from female to male are also examined."
1998,
Claudine Griggs,
English,
"The Transvestite Memoirs of the Abbe de Choisy" by Francois-Timoleon De Choisy.
The first edition of the memoirs was published in .... 1736. Yes, it is not a joke. Since then, the memoirs have been published many times in many languages. Probably this is one of the first trans documents in the history of humankind.
Let me quote the introduction from Goodreads: "By a whim of his mother, Francois Timoleon de Choisy - better known as the Abbé de Choisy - was dressed as a girl until the age of 18. After a short spell in male attire he became, by all accounts, the classic transvestite—a male heterosexual who never attempted to disguise his biological sex while going about in public in full female attire.
1736,
1998,
2000,
2016,
François-Timoléon De Choisy,
French,
