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: "Bangkok Ladyboys" by Henrik List.
"In this unique book, the author Henrik List and photographer Anders Askegaard travel from the 'heterosexual matrix' and out of the closet, across the boundaries of prejudice and through the mirror to a Bangkok at the beginning of the 21st century, where nothing is what it appears to be - not even many of the "girls" in the city's nightlife and red light districts.
A raw, poetic and reflected portrayal in text and images of Thailand's "third sex" - an essay about and 48 pages of color photographs of these so-called ladyboys."
2006,
Danish,
Henrik List,
Thailand,
Original title: "Nichts darf sinnlos enden: Über Charlotte von Mahlsdorf und das Theaterstück »Ich bin meine eigene Frau" (Nothing should end meaninglessly: About Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and the play I am my own wife) by Peter Süß.
The book presents the story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, whose birth name was Lothar Berfelde, a German transgender woman and museum curator who gained fame for her efforts in preserving and documenting the cultural history of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) during the Cold War era.
She was born on March 18, 1928, in Berlin, Germany, and died on April 30, 2002.
Charlotte von Mahlsdorf survived the Nazi regime and later the oppressive East German regime. She openly identified as a transgender woman and became known for her unique museum, the Gründerzeit Museum, which housed a collection of everyday objects from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The museum was located in Mahlsdorf, a district of Berlin.
Her life and achievements became widely known through the play "I Am My Own Wife" by Doug Wright, which premiered in 2003. The play, based on interviews with Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 2004. The play explores themes of identity, survival, and the impact of political regimes on individual lives.
2006,
Charlotte von Mahlsdorf,
German,
Peter Süß,
Original title: "La loi du genre: une histoire culturelle du troisième sexe" (The Law of Gender: A Cultural History of the Third Sex) by Laure Murat.
"Man or woman. Is there a viable space between or outside these two categories?" asks Laure Murat at the beginning of The Law of Gender. The answer is yes: there is another category, at once literary, medical and police, that of the "third sex". Starting from the famous definition of the German jurist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (the "third sex" is "a woman's soul in a man's body" and vice versa), the historian considers that the "third sex" is in fact a third gender, i.e. a political, social and cultural construction as opposed to anatomical sex. She therefore apprehends this "third sex" as "a fact of language, ordering a series of theories and discourses around figures supposed to embody them between 1835 and 1939, mainly in France, but also in Germany and England".
2006,
French,
Laure Murat,
"Thāng plīan" ทางเปลี่ยน (Change of Path) is the Thai language edition of "Tiǎozhàn shàngdì de cuò: Jīnxīng de wǔmèng rénshēng" - 挑戰上帝的錯：金星的舞夢人生 (Challenging God's Mistakes: Venus' Dancing Life), published by Jin Xing in 2004.
Jin Xing (Chinese: 金星; pinyin: Jīn Xīng) was born in 1967 in Shenyang, China, to an ethnic Korean family. She is a Chinese ballerina, modern dancer, choreographer, actress, founder, and artistic director of the contemporary dance company Shanghai.
In addition, she is a transgender celebrity and icon of the Chinese transgender community. This unusual memoir describes how China's foremost male ballet dancer (and colonel in the People's Army) underwent one of China's first sex-change operations and became the Shanghai Ballet's prima ballerina.
2006,
China,
Jin Xing,
Thai,
Original title: "Perempuan Tanpa V" (Women Without V) by Merlyn Sopjan.
Merlyn Sofyan tells a story about herself after the success of her first book, "Jangan Lihat Kelaminku!: Suara hati seorang waria" (Don't Look at My Genitals!: The Voice of a Transgender), published in 2005.
This 2006 Indonesian Transgender Beauty Queen confirms that her existence is not that of a second-class human being, she longs to be called a woman, not a transvestite.
"Merlyn herself underwent an inner struggle for quite a long time before her family’s acceptance. She began to feel “different” as a child, but she could never define herself because public discourses about gender dysphoria and transwomen were not yet widely held at the time. With the lapse of time, she realized her female mind, but she had been physically born as a male. Merlyn kept this awareness to herself."
2006,
Indonesian,
Merlyn Sopjan,
Original title: "Luc heißt jetzt Lucia" (Luc is now called Lucia) by Joe Bergmann.
Transsexuality: Women who are men and men who are women? Is it the pleasure of disguise and acting or a phenomenon? Ultimately, the foundation is laid with prenatal brain development. However, education is crucial to the end result - but what influence does the environment have on this development?
Let's look at Oscar Wilde, who was associated not only with his works but also with a dazzling personality. So his homosexual inclination became his downfall after years of success, but he remained a loving father and husband. A story of the twentieth century, because... "Children you don't love become adults you don't love" (Pearl S.Buck).
2006,
German,
Joe Bergmann,
Full title: "Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws: 101 Alternatives to Teen Suicide" by Kate Bornstein.
"Celebrated transsexual trailblazer Kate Bornstein has, with more humor and spunk than any other, ushered us into a world of limitless possibility through a daring re-envisionment of the gender system as we know it.
Here, Bornstein bravely and wittily shares personal and unorthodox methods of survival in an often cruel world. A one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive outside the box, Hello, Cruel World is a much-needed unconventional approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, but alive.
Hello, Cruel World features a catalog of 101 alternatives to suicide that range from the playful (moisturize!), to the irreverent (shatter some family values), to the highly controversial. Designed to encourage readers to give themselves permission to unleash their hearts' harmless desires, the book has only one directive: "Don't be mean." It is this guiding principle that brings its reader on a self-validating journey, which forges wholly new paths toward a resounding decision to choose life.
Tenderly intimate and unapologetically edgy, Kate Bornstein is the radical role model, the affectionate best friend, and the guiding mentor all in one."
2006,
English,
Interview,
Kate Bornstein,
USA,
Full title: "Head Over Heels: Wives Who Stay with Cross-Dressers and Transsexuals".
"Head Over Heels gives voice to thirty ordinary women who live extraordinary lives as partners to crossdressers, transgenderists, and male-to-female transsexuals. These unique women discuss, with honesty and great candor, how they first learned of their partners’ gender issues, how they’ve coped with the emotions that followed, how they’ve dealt with concerns about privacy/secrecy, and how they’ve handled disclosure to children, friends, and family members.
Far from a collection of “happily ever after” stories, these narratives are filled with pain, courage, curiosity, and joy as each woman struggles to redefine a relationship that includes intimacy, social acceptance, dignity, and respect.
2006,
English,
Virginia Erhardt,
Full title: "The New Goddess: Transgender Women in the Twenty-First Century" by Gypsey Teague.
"The New Goddess: Transgender Women in the Twenty-First Century is a special and valuable book because it will be viewed differently in different circles. This quality is its strength. To be clear, it will not necessarily be "all things to all people'" but, rather, will speak to those different audiences associated with transgendered women.
The academic, for instance, will have much primary source material in the contributions from transgendered women, whose personal histories are, at once, emotionally honest, at times frightening, and always compelling reading.
2006,
English,
Gypsey Teague,
Original title: "A lélek műtétei" (Surgeries of the soul) by Judit Takács.
Our book was produced as part of the research entitled Transsexuals in the Health and Social Care System within the framework of the Social Inclusion - 2003 program. This was the first descriptive research on transsexual people in Hungary, using social science approaches, which sought to provide a comprehensive picture of the social treatment of the phenomenon of transsexuality by exploring the official and health options for gender reassignment.
The target group of transsexuals in our study was people who entered or intended to enter the health care system, who defined themselves as transsexual now or in the past, or who had a need to change their gender. In addition to studies based on interviews with stakeholders and professionals with practical experience with transsexuality, the volume includes, among others, excerpts from studies by Harold Garfinkel and Sam Dylan More, the results of our questionnaire study, recommendations to social policymakers to develop good practice, and the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights on transsexual people.
2006,
Hungarian,
Judit Takács,
Original title: "Transgenerismos: Una Experiencia Transexual Desde La Perspectiva Antropologica" (Transgenderisms: A Transsexual Experience From An Anthropological Perspective).
Although there have probably always been transsexuals, transsexuality, as we know it today (i.e. with synthetic sex hormones and sex reassignment surgery), was born for the general public of our time with the spectacular return of Christine Jorgensen to America after her gender reassignment surgery in Denmark, in 1952. Norma Mejía was then 8 years old and the vague impression, which soon became a certainty, that the news affected her intimately.
With the passage of time, she has been in contact with transsexuality in several countries and from different points of view: from repression and from the acceptance of her own transsexuality, as a client of transsexual prostitutes and as a transsexual prostitute, as a lawyer for transsexuals and as a militant of a transsexual community, as a transsexual novelist and as a scholar of transsexuality from the anthropological view.
2006,
Norma Mejia,
Spanish,
Full title: "Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering" by Richard Ekins and Dave King.
"Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering documents the life and work of Virginia Prince, whose writings on transvestites and transsexuals influenced the thinking of an entire generation. This unique book gathers and updates her most important - and hard-to-find - articles that chronicle the development of her philosophy over a twenty-year period and provide insight into her role in the creation of a transgender community.
The book includes a photo essay by acclaimed photographer Mariette Pathy Allen, a portrait of Virginia at age 92 from Richard F. Docter, and a foreword by celebrated transgender activist, historian, and scholar Susan Stryker.
2006,
Dave King,
English,
Richard Ekins,
Virginia Prince,
"Bàn mèng: Jīnxīng zìzhuàn" - 半夢：金星自傳 (Half a Dream: Autobiography of Venus) is the second Chinese language edition of Jin Xing's biography.
Jin Xing (Chinese: 金星; pinyin: Jīn Xīng) was born in 1967 in Shenyang, China, to an ethnic Korean family. She is a Chinese ballerina, modern dancer, choreographer, actress, founder, and artistic director of the contemporary dance company Shanghai.
In addition, she is a transgender celebrity and icon of the Chinese transgender community. This unusual memoir describes how China's foremost male ballet dancer (and colonel in the People's Army) underwent one of China's first sex-change operations and became the Shanghai Ballet's prima ballerina.
2006,
China,
Chinese,
Jin Xing,
Full title: "Living a Lie: A Transgendered Journey" by Jamey Lynne Bishop.
""Living a Lie - A Transgendered Journey" is the first book on the topic to deal with the issue of Gender Identity Disorder from an internal viewpoint.
In contrast to previous works written by psychologists who study the transgendered and offer their own rationalizations for the phenomenon of GID and those written by transsexuals who regurgitate the party line; this book redefines those erroneous concepts and corrects much misinformation on the transgender phenomenon."
2006,
English,
Jamey Lynne Bishop,
Original title: "Histoire des transsexuels en France" (History of Transsexuals in France)
Being the country of the emergence of the transsexual phenomenon at the beginning of the twentieth century, Germany then met the necessary conditions for the implementation of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld's theories on "sexual intermediaries". After the ransacking by the Nazis of the Institute of Sexology, France takes over in Europe: the artist Michel-Marie Poulain announces her change of gender in Voilà and the deported Marie André Schwidenhammer creates the first organization to help transsexuals.
These two pioneers thus laid the foundations for social visibility that reached its peak with the transgender cabaret culture in Paris in the 1950s and 60s when the French discovered the scandalous Beetle. However, even after "sexual liberation", the judicial, police, and psychiatric authorities put in place repression in order to prevent transsexuals from changing their civil status and making their transition in good conditions.
2006,
Bambi,
Coccinelle,
French,
Georges Burou,
Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy,
Marie-Pierre Pruvot,
Maxime Foerster,
Full title: "The First Lady: I Was a Vogue Model and a National Celebrity but I Was Living With a Secret That Was to Shake the World..."
It was the second biography of April Ashley, for the first time written only by herself. However, the book was pulled from the market, after it was discovered that it plagiarized the 1982 book written by Duncan Fallowell and April Ashley titled "April Ashley's Odyssey".
April Ashley (1935–2021) was an English model, actress, cabaret artist, and celebrity. Outed as a transgender woman by The Sunday People newspaper in 1961, she was one of the earliest British people known to have undergone gender reassignment surgery.
2006,
April Ashley,
English,
Georges Burou,
Original title: "Memorias Trans: Transexuales, transformistas y travestis" (Trans memories. Transsexuals, transformistas and transvestites),
This book collects for the first time the personal testimony of men and women, mostly renowned artists from the world of entertainment, with a common denominator: these strong personalities fight against discrimination and repressive laws and claim the free exercise of sexuality and affection among people.
Discover some facts that will give you the essential keys to understanding how unusual characters lived with their triumphs and failures in a constant challenge to the most overflowing imagination.
The actor-showman Pierrot, an undisputed figure for more than two decades in the main shows of Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, and Seville, has been for thirty years compiling interviews and graphic material that are collected with all sincerity and crudeness in this historical book.
2006,
Pierrot,
Spain,
Spanish,
Full title: "Right Side Out: In-Tune Within, to Be in Harmony with the World".
"I didn't have the fortitude or the energy to try to keep that going anymore. I just wanted to find myself, and be myself. Far more than a transsexual memoir, Right Side Out: In-tune Within, To Be In Harmony With The World is a plunge into the core of what makes a person who they are on a journey into the brightest and darkest recesses of humanity and back through author Annah Moore's unique and deeply passionate struggle for survival in a quest to find her true self.
Through candid vignettes and vivid recollections, Moore shares with us some of the all-time lows and highs on her journey through life. Not only does Moore give you entertaining and thought-provoking glimpses into her experiences, she takes you one step further and explains exactly how each of these incredible events helped transform not only her outer self, but her entire being.
2006,
Annah Moore,
English,
USA,
Original title: "Fluch der Geburt: Mein Leben mit der Transsexualität" (Curse of birth - My life with transsexuality) by Katrin Lindemann.
On August 9, 2002, Katrin Lindemann began to write down her story, her life. A life with ups and downs. A life in which the intolerance of many people became a constant companion, but also a life that Katrin Lindemann didn't let get down.
Born Reiner Lindemann in 1948, she felt "something was wrong" early on, but there was still a long way to go before she finally changed her gender in 1992. This autobiography describes what often seemed like a "curse of birth". Without writing in a gimmicky or striking way, she tells of her life with transsexuality and thus provides deep insight, not only into her thoughts but also into our society.
2006,
German,
Germany,
Katrin Lindemann,
Original title: "Patrizia B.: L'insopportabile leggerezza" (Patricia B.: The unbearable lightness) by Federico Cravero and Luca Iaccarino.
Donato Broco, in "art" Patrizia B., 53 years old, one of the most famous trans people in Italy. Risen to prominence after the night spent with one of the most famous scions of the Italian industrial bourgeoisie, Patrizia B, in this long interview, tells and confesses.
From the first steps in a village in Puglia, she chooses to "transform", and travel to that mysterious Turin that once again offers extraordinary experiences and slices of life.
A book far from the logic of pure gossip, rather the diary of a sui generis life, which brings back to the reality of a globalized, multiethnic, and multisexual world.
2006,
Federico Cravero,
Italian,
Luca Iaccarino,
Patricia B.,
