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.
Vicky de Lambray, 1950-1986, also known as Vikki de Lambray and previously David Christian Lloyd-Gibbon or David Gibbon, was a British transvestite prostitute, famous for being a favourite of Fleet Street gossip columnists. De Lambray used to say that she would be "the most famous transgender woman ever and die dramatically at the age of 30".
According to Zagria: "In 1983 she had a brief sexual encounter with Captain Anatoli Zotov, former Soviet Naval attaché, and a briefer one with Sir James Dunnett, a former head of MI6. Consequently, she was investigated as a possible security risk.
The same year her 900-page autobiography which ‘named names’ went missing." "In 1986 she became a person of interest in the investigation into a series of homosexual murders when her name was found in a suspect’s address book.
In August 1986, she telephoned the Press Association and said: 'I have just been killed. I have been injected with a huge amount of heroin. I am desperate. A few hours later she was found dead of a heroin overdose in her flat in Stockwell."
2012,
English,
Jesse Russell,
Ronald Cohn,
Vicky de Lambray,
Original title: "Die transzendierte Frau: Eine Autobiografie" (The Transcended Woman: An Autobiography)
'I'm sixty-seven and staring in the mirror. Thence reality stares back at me. I am Transsexual. I was born as a male and now live my life as something else. Forty years ago I underwent an operation in Casablanca, which consisted of making my male body a female one – and made me from a heterosexual man into a lesbian woman.
Out of love, Jean Lessenich decided twelve years after her sex change, to live as a man again. This seemed to her to be the only way to give her Japanese partner permanent residence in Germany. Today fifteen years after her death, she lives again as a lesbian wife.
Beyond all clichés, this autobiography shows us that life as a transsexual is not a Hollywood movie. It does not promise women's happiness after appropriate surgery, but shows, that it is worthwhile to go your own way.'
2012,
German,
Germany,
Jean Lessenich,
"I wanted to love her. Honestly, I did. But she was trying to destroy my only son. She said her name was Angela, I called her William. I thought she was my son, but I was wrong and just couldn't see it.
I’m Your Daughter, Too is a painful story of the personal battle that took the author to the brink of suicide.
Some parents of transgender teens drape themselves in a shroud of fear, guilt, anger and confusion. Few have come forward to admit their lack of compassion during their child’s difficult transition.
This is a memoir with tears, laughter, multi-generational family dynamics, and finally--triumph over adversity."
2012,
English,
R. Madison Amato,
Full title: "Beyond Face Value" by Rajée Rajindra Narinesingh.
"You can never see yourself as the world does. No matter how many mirrors you look into, you won't see what everyone else does. Beyond Face Value is not just a lesson Rajée had to learn, but it is an ethos she now lives her life by. Have you ever believed you were destined for a path that was totally different from where you started, or felt that life was directing you against the normal, the expected and the accepted, and that every challenge you faced was due to a higher power guiding you to a greater place?
Rajée's story is both inspiring and devastating in equal measure. An outcast literally from birth, Rajée has had to fight racism, prejudice and ignorance her entire life. Through a series of events that would have broken even the strongest man, Rajée emerged as a butterfly does from a cocoon into a beautiful spirit, yet the cruelty of life has deprived her of the traditional facial value.
2012,
English,
Rajée Rajindra Narinesingh,
"The true story of one person's lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria. Intriguing, highly informative, and funny, this memoir takes the reader on the journey from initial self-awareness at age six through years of resistance and denial to final acceptance and the ultimate decision to assume a dramatically different role from the one assigned at birth."
I interviewed Kenna in 2014 and this is what she told me about herself and her transition: "I’m sure you’ve heard the term “late bloomer”. I was born in 1941, knew without a doubt by age six that I was transgender, and I kept it secret for more than five decades. I don’t remember how I learned it was something to be ashamed of, but I had no relatable examples in the media and no one I could talk to.
2012,
English,
Kenna Henderson,
USA,
Full title: "Cooking in Heels: A Memoir Cookbook"
"In Cooking in Heels, Ceyenne Doroshow offers up 40 Southern-style favorites with a Caribbean twist. As a transgender woman who was inspired to write her book while serving prison time for a prostitution conviction, Ceyenne might not seem like the most likely representative of home-cooked family values.
But her book, which is peppered with good humor and begins with the story of her life, shows that food and love are the ties that bind, and family is what you make it."
2012,
Ceyenne Doroshow,
English,
Full title: "If You Really Loved Me" by Emma Cantons
"This is the story of how, and why, Emma Cantons stayed with her husband Anthony after she discovered he was a transexual woman.
The book covers three years from the moment when Victoria declared her existence, to their vow renewal celebration in 2012."
2012,
Emma Cantons,
English,
Original title: "Keshō danshi otome, jinsei o 2-bai tanoshimu hōhō" - 化粧男子 男と女、人生を2倍楽しむ方法 (Makeup Boys: Men and Women, How to Enjoy Life Twice as Much) by Miyo Inoue - 井上魅夜.
'If you choose between a man and a woman, do you have to discard one or the other? I want to enjoy my life by going back and forth between my appearance and gender." "I want to be loved as a woman, but I want to be loved as a man at the same time."
A half-life story of a boy who discovered "makeup" at the age of 25!
Miya - chan's openness, full of fun, that's as good as manga!! First of all, I want you to know that there is such a way of life. (Psychiatrist, Director of GID Society Katsumi Harima)'
2012,
Japanese,
Miyo Inoue,
Full title: "TransMontana: A Memoir of Transformation in Body, Mind & Spirit"
"TRANSMONTANA is the story of Montana hunter and county attorney Robert Zenker’s transition from a male, popularly elected public official to a modern, professional woman. Robert Zenker was a married man and father of two, boxed in the psychologically complicated, emotionally taut web of secrecy, shame, fear, guilt, doubt and ambiguity of self of a transsexual deeply in denial.
Roberta inhabited that body and all the accouterments of the life of a man in Montana for nearly fifty years before her transition from man to woman in 2007. The remarkable story of her emerging from her box is a complex, courageous and sometimes dangerous journey involving not only physical transition, but also alcohol recovery and the result of both – a spiritual transformation.
2012,
English,
Roberta Zenker,
Full title: "Finally Chelle: The Musings of an Average Transsexual Woman" by Chelle Padraigin.
In a literary world often dominated by grand narratives and sweeping heroics, Chelle Padraigin’s memoir Finally Chelle: The Musings of an Average Transsexual Woman stands out as a refreshingly candid and often hilarious window into the life of a woman whose journey is anything but ordinary, yet told through the eyes of someone who sees herself as “average.”
What makes this book so compelling is the way Chelle mixes humor and heartbreak with the grit and grace that define her story, delivering a narrative that’s both deeply personal and wildly relatable.
From the very first page, Chelle’s voice leaps off the page with the warmth of a friendly conversation and the wit of a seasoned storyteller. The book is written in a colloquial, breezy style that invites readers to settle in for a series of short chapters, each a snapshot into a moment, a thought, or a challenge that Chelle has faced on her unconventional path. It’s this structure that makes Finally Chelle feel like you’re sitting across the kitchen table from Chelle herself, sharing stories over coffee, laughing together, and maybe even wiping away a tear or two.
Chelle’s self-deprecating humor is a hallmark throughout the book. She calls herself “average”, but her experiences, observations, and the sheer force of her personality prove anything but ordinary. At 50 years old, Chelle’s reflections on transitioning as a trans woman in a small, conservative Georgia town don’t shy away from the difficult realities, but they also shine with surprising moments of joy and triumph.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Chelle’s memoir is the contrast between her transition and the life she continues to lead.
2012,
Chelle Padraigin,
English,
Interview,
USA,
Full title: "TRANS (per) FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work"
"Transgendered playwright, performer, columnist, and sex worker Nina Arsenault has undergone more than sixty plastic surgeries in pursuit of a feminine beauty ideal. In TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault, Judith Rudakoff brings together a diverse group of contributors, including artists, scholars, and Arsenault herself to offer an exploration of beauty, image, and the notion of queerness through the lens of Arsenault’s highly personal brand of performance art.
Illustrated throughout with photographs of the artist’s transformation over the years and demonstrating her diversity of personae, this volume contributes to a deepening of our understanding of what it means to be a woman and what it means to be beautiful. Also included in this volume is the full script of Arsenault’s critically acclaimed stage play, The Silicone Diaries."
2012,
Canada,
English,
Nina Arsenault,
Full title: "Climbing Life's Mountains: Overcoming Challenges of Biracial Birth, Adoption, Gender Identity, and Depression" by Jala A. McKenzie-Burns.
"Jala A. McKenzie-Burns was born of biracial parents on November 11, 1965 as Dave Edward Morris. Abandoned in the hospital, she was placed into the foster care system and adopted by an African-American family in 1972. As a young child, she personally experienced the racial unrest and was taunted for her dual racial heritage.
On top of this, she found herself expected to live up to society's demands of her as a boy and a young man, while she yearned for the things of a feminine nature. To hide the truth of who she felt she was inside, she joined the U.S. Marine Corps, worked in the political arena, graduated from college, married, and raised a child. In all that time, pain and depression followed her that she could not express her true nature. When her adoptive father died, she fell into a deep clinical depression, which triggered an attempted suicide and admission into a psych ward.
2012,
English,
Jala A. McKenzie-Burns,
Full title: "Loki's Joke: How I learned to stop fighting and be a woman"
"Loki's Joke is Penny Blackwell's autobiography. Written in the style of a novel, it shows how she spent the first sixty years of her life fighting to be happy inside the male body she was born with. It follows her journey from rejection of her true identity through to its final acceptance and resolution.
Loki's Joke is much more than just another transgender or sex-change story. Certainly that influence runs throughout, but the story shows how only slowly did the author realise how the identity problem was influencing every decision and every aspect of her life.
Penny, who started life as Paul Blackwell, was born in Croydon, South London, England. The story begins with his upbringing in a string of orphanages and homes for the children who had been orphaned by World War Two. There was the converted army barracks in Reading where corporal punishment was accepted, and the orphanage in Hastings where he met a person who was to influence, in absentia, a good part of his life. (Penny's second book, the novella The Hermit and the Ivory Box, describes this person more fully.)
2012,
English,
Penny Blackwell,
Full title: "Hung in the Middle: A Journey of Gender Discovery" by Alana Nicole Sholar.
Hung in the Middle: A Journey of Gender Discovery is an engaging and deeply personal memoir by Alana Nicole Sholar that chronicles her bittersweet journey of growing up transgender in Kentucky during an era when gender identity was taboo, misunderstood, and utterly silenced.
Born in 1961 as Alan, Alana’s early life unfolded in a close-knit, church-going family immersed in the rural traditions of central Kentucky’s Bluegrass region, an area renowned for its thoroughbred horse farms.
Alan’s childhood was marked by a secret, an inner truth that he didn’t yet understand but instinctively knew was essential to his sense of self. One of his earliest, most vivid memories, also featured on the book’s cover, was the sensation of putting on his mother’s clothes. This act, simple yet profound, gave Alan a fleeting but powerful glimpse into the person he was meant to be. Yet, the societal and cultural environment of 1960s rural Kentucky offered no safe space for such feelings to be voiced or explored. As a result, Alan spent years in self-denial and hiding, carrying his truth alone in silence.
For much of his early adult life, Alan worked a series of blue-collar jobs familiar to many middle-class Americans, laboring on Kentucky’s famed thoroughbred farms, training to become a jockey, working in construction, driving trucks, and factory work.
2012,
Alana Nicole Sholar,
English,
Interview,
USA,
Full title: "Sex Changes: A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On" by Christine Benvenuto.
In Sex Changes: A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On, Christine Benvenuto confronts the question that most people never imagine asking: What happens when the other woman is your husband? This searing, darkly humorous, and emotionally raw memoir invites us into the inner sanctum of a marriage disrupted not by infidelity, but by transformation,when Benvenuto’s husband of over two decades comes out as a transgender woman.
One night, as they lay in bed in their New England home, the father of her three children says, “I’m thinking constantly about my gender.” From that moment, the landscape of Christine’s life shifts irreversibly. What follows is not just the dissolution of a marriage, but the dismantling of identity, family roles, social expectations, and deeply rooted assumptions about love, gender, and the self.
Unlike many transgender memoirs that chart the joy and struggle of transitioning, Sex Changes is told from the other side of the mirror. Benvenuto writes as the cisgender spouse, blindsided, heartbroken, and profoundly confused. She offers no sanitized narrative of easy acceptance, nor does she demonize her former partner. Instead, she chronicles a process of grief and reassembly.
2012,
Christine Benvenuto,
English,
Joy Ladin,
Full title: "Grrl Alex: A Personal Journey to a Transgender Identity"
"The possibility of embracing transgender as a legitimate identity is a relatively new phenomenon. What this book achieves, in straightforward and engaging language, is to combine formal academic research with a deeply moving personal narrative, to give the reader an insight into the world of a person who came to accept and embrace a transgender identity.
The book chronicles some of the significant experiences and moments that the author had in making this journey, and in exploring what was possible in terms of 'doing transgender': it's an emotional read. The author has broken new ground too. 'Gender-queering' challenges the assumption that to cross genders requires 'passing' - convincing others that you really are the 'opposite' gender. What the author's work shows is that this is not necessarily the case, and that an honest presentation of self, even if unconventional, can find much more acceptance than many (including even the author) would have thought possible.
2012,
Alex Drummond,
English,
Original title: "Mémoires d'une transsexuelle: La belle au moi dormant" (Memoirs of a transexual: The Sleeping Beauty (Suffering and Theory)
'If transsexualism is no longer a mental illness, transsexuality, a term that replaces it today, does not shed more light on what this inexplicable affection is. Even as "affection" becomes obsolete to speak of what henceforth would be a "right" of men and women to change sex.
The gap is obvious between pathology and fantasy, between suffering and whim. Questioning her experience, the author crosses the points of view of academics and transsexuals to achieve an atypical synthesis. Without complacency and with a fresh look at the issues of gender identity disorders, she provides a series of questions that are often new. She questions us and challenges us on the upheavals that could sign the abolition of genres."
2012,
French,
Marie Édith Cypris,
Full title: "Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between Genders" by Joy Ladin.
When Joy Ladin returned to Yeshiva University as the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution, she didn’t just make headlines, she opened a profound dialogue on gender, faith, and authenticity. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, charts her intimate, intellectual, and spiritual journey toward living as the woman she always knew herself to be. The book is not just about gender transition; it is about living honestly in the face of fear, navigating personal truth within religious tradition, and facing the cost of transformation with courage and hope.
Born in Rochester, New York, Joy Ladin, then known as Jay, was raised in a non-observant Jewish family. Her parents, Lola and Irving Ladin, supported cultural Jewish identity, and her mother especially encouraged synagogue and Hebrew school attendance. Though her upbringing wasn’t strictly religious, these early spiritual experiences left an imprint. From childhood, Ladin intuited that her assigned male identity was false. She called herself a pacifist at eight to avoid the masculine behaviors expected of her, already resisting the social roles that felt alien to her being.
2012,
English,
Joy Ladin,
"Growing up transgender is difficult. In the 1960s no one talks about people who want to be a different gender. Jill tries to make sense of her self, her family, and the events swirling around her. Friends pull her to a degree of happiness and sanity, into peer helping and then psychology.
As a man, she falls in love and develops a career as a school psychologist. She appears a successful man until near-death experiences remind her of what is important, and she embarks, at age 50, to become a woman outwardly, while continuing to work in schools.
Jill, expecting a difficult transition, is surprised by the support she receives from colleagues, parents, and students as she goes about her work in her true gender. She learns some surprising and uncomfortable truths about why her transition, in particular, had gone so well - truths beyond gender."
2012,
English,
Jill Davidson,
"This is a short autobiographical account of my transition from someone who was identified as male at birth, but was never happy that way.
After several years, I realized that not only was I meant to be a woman, but that I had the means to become my true self.
While this book contains adult content, it is not an "adult" book in the classic meaning of the word."
2012,
English,
Robyn Jane Sheppard,
