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: "Транссексуалка" (Transsexual Woman) by Alena Mayskaya (Алена Майская).
'I was actually born a boy, but the story of my change began long before I was born. On the ultrasound, the doctor, looking carefully at the screen, with full responsibility declared: "You will have a girl." And I, sitting inside my mother, shamefully covered my masculinity with my leg being full of shyness.'
'Without the slightest embarrassment, with the smallest intimate details, the heroine of this frank, soul-tearing book tells about her life. Lonely and happy. Dangerous and magical. Desperate and hopeful. Contradictory, like Elena herself, who is listed as Alexei on her passport. Like her relationship with her mother, with loved ones, rapists, friends, and colleagues. With myself. In peace. With all of us.'
'Let me be called a 'mistake of nature' and let me sometimes hear angry screams behind my back, let me not be hired, because according to my passport I am a man. I'm still happy. Because I am me! I'M DIFFERENT!'
2008,
Alena Mayskaya,
Russian,
Original title: "Favolose narranti: Storie di transessuali" (Fabulous storytellers: Stories of transsexuals) by Porpora Marcasciano.
'This book reconstructs through the story and the testimonies, the transsexual experience in our country, its change over time, but above all, the emergence of the transsexual phenomenon in its current complexity.
The stories of the heroines who offer us a clear image of the transsexual reality in Italy, bringing out the human, social, psychological, and political implications, are flanked by the interventions of some privileged witnesses who address the main problematic issues of the trans experience: the relationship with the gay world, with feminism and lesbianism, with services and social and work integration, with entertainment, with science and medicine. A book that dismantles prejudices, simplifications, political exploitation.'
2008,
Italian,
Porpora Marcasciano,
Full title: "My Life After Oprah!"
"Jecquin Stitt won a celebrity look-a-like contest given by Ladies Home Journal in 1991. She cause a media stir when it was found out that she was a man having a sex change.
Oprah took over the contest and that's when all the secrets come out as Jecquin explains in the book. Promises were made and broken. Other celebrities come to her aid. Then She tells of life as a transgender person before and after the surgery. Quite a tell-all book."
2008,
English,
Jecquin Irwin,
Original title: "Le mensonge d'une vie" (The lie of a lifetime)
"I feel more alive than ever. I am neither masculine nor feminine, just me, the soul soothed and ready to turn my heart to others, ready to love the whole world. I am proud to be male, but my heart is feminine. Pascal was born a man and lived for forty years a real inner struggle. Today with the serene and strong love of her partner, she lives with the new person who has slept in her for so long: Claire."
"The words of this hopeful testimony will speak to all who have ever wondered, "Who am I?" Beyond gender differences, it teaches us that there is a country where the essential thing is to recognize oneself as a human being. Pascal Claire lives in Alsace. She participated in February 2008 in a show on "Les amours impossibles" on France 2."
2008,
French,
Pascal Claire,
Full title: "Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara"
"Thomas was born into a family of twelve children in Ballyfermot. He had a grim childhood, he was bullied and humiliated at school, and all the time Thomas was hiding a dark secret that was buried so deep, not even he understood it.
Desperate to fit in, he looked for answers in religion, work, even marriage. But through his struggle and despair he reached rock-bottom and eventually tried to take his own life.
Somehow, Thomas made his life worth fighting for.
With the help of good friends and much soul-searching, he was able to have confirmed what he had somehow always known that he had been born in the wrong body and that he was actually a woman. The medical diagnosis of gender identity disorder a physical and neurological condition has allowed Thomas to step out of the shadows and to face the world at last as Sara, the person he truly was all along."
2008,
English,
Sara-Jane Cromwell,
Original title: "De vrouw van mijn leven: Ulrich werd Ulrike" (The woman of my life: Ulrich became Ulrike)
The book was written by Nico Blontrock, a Belgian journalist, radio figure, and author from West Flanders. I was not able to find any review of this book.
Have you ever read this book? If yes, please let me know.
2008,
Belgium,
Dutch,
Nico Blontrock,
Full title: "I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted" by Jennifer Finney Boylan.
"For Jennifer Boylan, creaking stairs, fleeting images in the mirror, and the remote whisper of human voices were everyday events in the Pennsylvania house in which she grew up in the 1970s. But these weren’t the only specters beneath the roof of the mansion known as the “Coffin House.” Jenny herself - born James - lived in a haunted body, and both her mysterious, diffident father and her wild, unpredictable sister would soon become ghosts to Jenny as well.
I’m Looking Through You is an engagingly candid investigation of what it means to be “haunted.” Looking back on the spirits who invaded her family home, Boylan launches a full investigation with the help of a group of earnest, if questionable, ghostbusters. Boylan also examines the ways we find connections between the people we once were and the people we become. With wit and eloquence, Boylan shows us how love, forgiveness, and humor help us find peace - with our ghosts, with our loved ones, and with the uncanny boundaries, real and imagined, between men and women."
2008,
English,
Jennifer Finney Boylan,
Full title: "Katherine's Diary: The Story of a Transsexual" by Katherine Cummings.
The book was published in 1992 and republished in 2008. In addition, Katherine authored "The Live and Loves of a Transgendered Lesbian Librarian". "In 1986 John Cummings became Katherine Cummings, and a whole life changed. In this painfully honest account of John's transformation into a woman, Katherine tells of years of fantasizing and cross-dressing behind locked doors, of the betrayal felt by her family and the final relief of surgery. Katherine's Diary covers a lifetime of self-discovery and self-destruction told with acerbic wit and crisp observation.
I think that I was irrational, even insane, at the time. My transsexualism had taken hold of me with such obsessive force that I could not concentrate on anything else. There I was, a fifty-year-old professional academic librarian who had desperately wanted to be female ever since memories began."
1992,
2008,
Australia,
English,
Interview,
Katherine Cummings,
Full title: "Trans People in Love" by Tracie O'Keefe and Katrina Fox.
"Trans People in Love is an illuminating resource for members of the trans community and their partners and families; gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and intersex people; sexologists; sex therapists; counselors; psychologists; psychotherapists; social workers; psychiatrists; medical doctors; educators; students; and couples and family therapists.
Trans People in Love provides a forum for the experience of being in love and in relationships with significant others for members of the trans community. This honest and respectful volume tells clinicians, scholars, and trans people themselves of the beauty and complexity that trans identity brings to a romantic relationship, what skills and mindsets are needed to forge positive relationships, and demonstrates the reality that trans people in all stages of transition can create stable and loving relationships that are both physically and emotionally fulfilling."
2008,
English,
Katrina Fox,
Tracie O'Keefe,
Full title: "A Lonely Heart: A True Transgender Story" by Susan Janet Barker.
In 2008, the book was introduced as follows: "Hello my name is Susan Janet Barker. I am a male-to-female transsexual. This is a true story of my transgender journey, from my panic-stricken beginnings to the full confidence and happy end. I hope it is informative as well as a good read for all who are interested in the subject of transgender, cross-dressing, and all related topics in between."
"In 2013, the second edition of the book was presented like this: "Hello my name is Alison Laura Goodman; my pen name is Susan Janet Barker. I am a male-to-female transsexual.
This is a true story of my transgender journey, from my panic-stricken beginnings to the full confidence and happy end. I hope it is informative as well as a good read for all who are interested in the subject of transgender, cross-dressing, and all related topics in between."
2008,
2013,
Alison Laura Goodman,
English,
Susan Janet Barker,
UK,
Full title: "The Exceptional, Impossible Woman Indeed! Labels" by Millye Carter Bloodworth. The book was published in 2008 and republished in 2013.
"Milton Bernie Carter was born in East St. Louis, Illinois into a loving family whose culturally diverse beliefs and mixed racial bloodlines made for "many socially sensitive but usually supportive conversations in the home." Born under sign of Leo, he was told, "You'll be ruled by the heart, and that means you're always going to think kindly of people."
If only the same could be said about many of those whom Milton would come in contact with throughout the years, even today. It was the early-1960s, in East St. Louis, Illinois when young Milton began experimenting with cross-dressing. By the time he was thirteen, though feeling like eighteen, he felt even more trapped in his skin "hating the male anatomy" the doctor saw fit to leave him with as an infant. More questions about his own sexuality arose after Milton with his mother consults a local female physician who tells him his condition is "transgenderism or transsexualism."
2008,
English,
Millye Carter Bloodworth,
Full title: "I am Vidya: A Transgender's Journey"
"Identities are not mere markers we are known by, they define as well as limit us. They can both confine or release a consciousness. I Am Vidya is the story of one such journey that of a declaration, of the claiming of an identity. It is an assertion of a consciousness that has suffered the agony of being trapped in a mould it does not belong to, a body it does not identify with.
Vidya has lived through all the indignities forced upon a tirunangai, a transgender, by a society that divides and defines itself as men and women in terms of biology alone from being spurned by her family, to begging on the streets as a social outcast, from donning a woman's clothes, to undergoing excruciating surgery to lose her 'manhood', from suffering emotional and physical harassment, to arriving at her true identity. A compelling narrative about a woman trapped within a man's body, this is a story of extraordinary courage and perseverance."
2008,
English,
India,
Living Smile Vidya,
"Shanghai Tango: Mein Leben als Soldat und Tänzerin" (Shanghai Tango: My life as a soldier and dancer) is the German 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.
2008,
China,
German,
Jin Xing,
"Shanghai Tango" is the English 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,
2008,
China,
English,
Jin Xing,
Full title: "Autobiography of an Androgyne" by Ralph Werther (Jennie June/Earl Lind).
Jennie June published The Autobiography of an Androgyne in 1918, making her one of the first transgender Americans to publicize her story. Her goal was to make her trials well known and to rally the support of Americans to create an accepting environment for young adults who do not necessarily adhere to gender and sexual norms. June also wanted to prevent her younger counterparts from committing suicide.
Her memoir explains that she identifies as a third sex, calling herself an "androgyne," and includes many personal narratives and details about her sexual encounters, and includes her story of castration. The memoir describes in detail her sexual encounters and desires, but also contains pleas for understanding and acceptance of these "fairies." Earl Lind (also known as Ralph Werther and Jennie June) is also the author of The Female Impersonators, first published in 1922, and then republished in 2005, 2008, 2018 (the main cover), 2020, 2021, and 2022.
1918,
2005,
2008,
2018,
2020,
2022,
Earl Lind,
English,
Jennie June,
Ralph Werther,
Full title: "Bodycage: A Transgender Autobiography" by Rehana Incognito.
"Caught up in the migration boom of the 1960s, the small child moved as a "Ten Pound Pom" for this "better life" promised by her quarrelling parents. From their first new home... a dry, dusty mineral mining town in North Western Australia, Riannon relocated to a small harbour city... already aware of feeling like a fish out of water. After training in hospitality and nursing, as more of her essential self grew and unfolded, she became an exotic dancer... captivating the minds of powerful businessmen across the Far East.
In an underworld, alternative community of gay, lesbian, transgender and everthing in between, Riannon followed the standards of others, finding herself exploring every area of the sex industry... from high-class escort to internationally intimidating bondage Mistress. She wandered the many twisted, often dirty paths. Her journey, and all those she met, befriended, lost or buried along the way add to the triumph of self-discovery and a woman's true worth."
2008,
Australia,
English,
Rehana Incognito,
