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: "Yumewoakiramenaide 68-sai de seibetsutekigō shujutsu" 夢をあきらめないで 68歳で性別適合手術 (Don't give up on your dreams: Gender reassignment surgery at 68) by Akemi Mitsuchi 三土 明笑.
"The author is now a 70-year-old economist. From her childhood, she felt uncomfortable with her male body. She took action as LGBT awareness spread, but she soon developed bipolar disorder and fell into a long period of depression. She overcame his dysphoria and underwent gender reassignment surgery after retirement.
When she was a boy, she said that she "wanted to be a man (to have a man's heart)," even though she was a woman at heart. A glimpse of the pressure from society can be seen in the fact that she wanted to be a man rather than a woman. The book chronicles her journey from nearly a decade of suffering, mostly depressed, to the point where she came to believe in her own way of life."
2019,
Akemi Mitsuchi,
Japanese,
Full title: "I am Me He/She: A Personal Story of Being Transgendered" by AMR AMR.
"What is it like to be Transgendered? What is Gender Dysphoria? This book is a must-read for friends and family who know someone who is Transgendered and A must-read for people who think they are Transgendered. For students of gender studies your education cannot be complete without reading this book.
The Author does an amazing job of sharing the experience in a way that is so easy to read and understand. The writing style is easy to follow and the book is an easy read that will change your ideas on the subject. Give the book one weekend of your life and it will change your perspective on the subject."
Full title: "Second Lives, Second Chances: A Surgeon's Stories of Transformation" by Donald R. Laub.
"Through his work in plastic and reconstructive surgery, Dr. Donald Laub changed the lives of thousands of people who had been shunned by society. Dr. Laub’s influence fostered the development of three key areas in the surgical profession: pioneering and influencing international humanitarian medical missions in the developing world, being at the forefront of gender affirmation surgery for transgender people since 1968, and the education and training of over 50 plastic and reconstructive surgeons.
His unstinting efforts to surgically correct cleft palates gave new lives to thousands of children in developing countries. As one of the original surgeons to perform gender affirmation surgery, Laub not only continually improved on his methods, but he also became a tireless advocate for the rights of transgender people."
2019,
Donald R. Laub,
English,
Full title: "Drag: The Complete Story (A Look at the History and Culture of Drag)" by Simon Doonan.
"Drag is transformation, communication and, above all, exaggeration, where gender non–conformity is the plat du jour. Drag: The Complete Story observes this increasingly complex world by exploring drag's journey through the twentieth century.
Corralled into thematic chapters, including glamor drag, art drag, butch drag, black drag, historical drag, comedy drag and popstar drag, this book is the first flamboyant and poignant survey of drag culture.
Drag: The Complete Story is not just for fabulous queens and drag enthusiasts but for anyone interested in gender fluidity and the culture surrounding it.
"You come for the glamorous pictures and stay for the sizzling prose. Doonan writes like an angel with a sword: beautifully and provocatively." NY Journal of Books
2019,
Drag queen,
English,
Simon Doonan,
Full title: "In Transition: A Transgender Pre-op Journey" by Trystlynn Barber.
"A literary memoir highlighting many of the most commonly encountered obstacles and trials in the "coming out" for a male to female transgender woman. Included are chapters on repression, coming out to friends and family, psychotherapy, hormone replacement therapy, laser hair removal, passability. coming out at work, the legal name and gender marker change, and voice training.
Also included are excerpts of other real-life events which occurred during the process, involving self-harm, suicide, and familial and societal rejection. Written in a compelling, intriguing, and informative manner."
2019,
English,
Trystlynn Barber,
Original title: "Tesis sobre una domesticación" (Thesis on a domestication) by Camila Sosa Villada.
A trans actress – who could not be a mother – adopts a six-year-old boy with her husband, a homosexual lawyer. That HIV-positive boy – who did not know his biological father and whose mother committed suicide when she discovered that she infected him with AIDS – was raised by the maternal grandparents, until the grandfather killed his wife and then committed suicide.
The book lays bare the fragility of the bonds and the "invisible" agreements, not exempt from violence, that are woven around marriage and couples. The writer and actress from Cordoba raises questions about motherhood, fatherhood and orphanhood with an unlimited curiosity to try to account for the abyss between desires and experiences, between what is imagined or dreamed and what happens in the family back room. The apparent initial happiness of "life resolved" explodes. "Her legs, her heart, her transvestism, her family, everything weighs on her then as she had never weighed on. And being an orphan too," warns the narrator.
2019,
Argentina,
Camila Sosa Villada,
Spanish,
Original title: "Solitudini Travestite: Racconti reali tra sogno e realtà di transessuali e travestite" (the Solitude of Tranvestite: Real Tales between Dream and Reality of Transsexuals and Transvestites) by Sabrina Love.
Subtle sarcasm travels through these real-life tales of Sabrina Love's concrete dreams. The author, bisexual transvestite as she defines herself, travels into a world of dreams where the acceptance of women like her is the norm or at least not a scandal.
Clear and fluent writing accompanies the reader in this world of sweet sex where the third gender is an integral part of life.
The last story, very short, points the finger fiercely against hypocrisy.
The author then wanted to enrich this ebook with four of her personal photos: "Do I look like a man?"
2019,
Italian,
Sabrina Love,
Original title: "Trajectoires Trans" (Trans Trajectories) by Julia Pacifico.
"Raerae". In Tahiti, everyone knows at least one. Everyone knows what that means. Directly associated with the idea of drugs-alcohol-prostitution, the life trajectories of trans people on the island all seem to be mapped out.
The author spent time with them and after collecting their testimonies, the word "raerae" takes on a whole new meaning. It echoes a stigma, that of their femininity. Marginalized from an early age, they constantly build and legitimize their feminine identities in a society that discredits their practices. Being trans in Tahiti is not just about being a raerae. This book gives them a voice to understand the complexity of their life trajectories.
2019,
French,
Julia Pacifico,
Tahiti,
Original title: "Persone transessuali a Cuba" (Transsexual people in Cuba) by Mariela Castro Espin.
The book addresses a crucial belief that all forms of discrimination have the same origin, but are expressed in different ways according to the specific socio-historical contexts. "Transsexual People in Cuba" highlights how exploitative economic relationships and processes of a cultural nature reproduce and recreate values, perceptions, representations, stigmas, and stereotypes.
The book presents how the socialist experience has inherited codes that contradict actions towards emancipation in the field of justice and social equity because various studies testify that iniquity continues to reproduce itself in contexts associated with skin colour, the condition of women, generations, and territories of residence.
2019,
Cuba,
Italian,
Mariela Castro Espin,
Original title: "Las biuty queens" by Iván Monalisa Ojeda.
With a cheeky and honest look, Iván Monalisa Ojeda immerses himself in the transvestite universe of the New York streets. The stories in this book narrate her life and that of her companions, Latin American transsexuals who make the street, smoke crystal meth, participate in beauty contests, look for clients on high heels and are victims of Trump's new immigration policies. A world where laughter, survival, death and love will be glimpsed in a city that fascinates and corners the protagonists.
The narrative talent of Iván Monalisa Ojeda, who plays with a street language full of rhythm, freedom and freshness, places him as a surprising and particular voice in current Latin American literature.
2019,
Chile,
Iván Monalisa Ojeda,
Spanish,
Full title: "In My Mind's Eye: A Thought Diary" by Jan Morris.
"'I have never before in my life kept a diary of my thoughts, and here at the start of my ninth decade, having for the moment nothing much else to write, I am having a go at it. Good luck to me.'
So begins this extraordinary book, a collection of diary pieces that Jan Morris wrote for the Financial Times over the course of 2017.
A former soldier and journalist, and one of the great chroniclers of the world for over half a century, she writes here in her characteristically intimate voice - funny, perceptive, wise, touching, wicked, scabrous, and above all, kind - about her thoughts on the world, and her own place in it as she turns ninety. From cats to cars, travel to home, music to writing, it's a cornucopia of delights from a unique literary figure."
2019,
English,
Georges Burou,
Jan Morris,
UK,
Original title: "Peilissä näin naisen: Zoen tarina" (I saw a woman in the mirror: Zoe's story) by Zoe Foster, Petri Pietiläinen, and Juha Metso.
A woman who was born into the body of a man. Everyone considered him an English boy. She looked at herself in the mirror and dreamed at night - she was a woman. Then she fell in love with a Finnish woman, got married, moved to Finland, and had two children. For a long time, Zoe Foster gathered the courage to transform into the person she really was. She told her wife, "I'm a woman clad in a man's body!" Tears, anxiety, sadness, anger, and divorce followed. Zoe was on the verge of suicide. She paid a heavy price for his honesty.
This story encourages everyone to be happy as human beings without the gendered compulsion to be female or male. Zoe is a proud trans woman. She is more than a woman or a man. Petri Pietiläinen (b. 1966) is an award-winning non-fiction writer from Kotka, whose works include One Regiment, One Hundred Stories - Veterans Tell (Docendo 2017) and Junnu Vainio, Such a Life Is (Docendo 2018). Juha Metso (b. 1965) has been successful as both a newspaper and art photographer. His images have been used in dozens of books.
2019,
Finnish,
Juha Metso,
Petri Pietiläinen,
Zoe Foster,
Original title: "Vidas Trans: A luta de transgeneros brasileiros em busca de seu espaco social" (Trans Lives: The struggle of Brazilian transgenders in search of their social space) by Amara Moira, João W. Nery, Márcia Rocha, and Tarso Brant.
In VIDAS TRANS, four trans people: Amara Moira, João W. Nery, Márcia Rocha, and Tarso Brant tell readers about the moment when they realized that something was different, about the feeling of inadequacy before the required standards, about the prejudices and pain experienced inside and outside the family, about the moment of transition and, finally, about the freedom felt by this decision. In four individual reports, each one tells their life story, and constant and everyday struggle in reaffirming the right to their name, body, and full existence.
2019,
Amara Moira,
Brazil,
João W. Nery,
Márcia Rocha,
Portuguese,
Tarso Brant,
Original title: "Dziennik" (The Diary) by Klaudia Newerna. This is the second book by Klaudia Newerna. Her first book "Onna: Sceny z życia" (S(he): Life Snapshots) was published in 2010.
The record of events in the author's life covers the period from December 2000 to mid-2005, including a reference to some of her activities after those years. In the book, the author describes her own experiences from the period in which she undertook the process of gender transition, which at the beginning is usually associated with the need to confront doctors and the legal system.
The described events concern the period that should be treated as "pre-Internet times", the experiences of contemporary transgender women are currently shaped differently due to the fact that the Internet is generally available. Although there are relatively few transsexual people, their fates can be very diverse – this is mainly influenced by: financial resources, the issue of acting as a woman or a man (mtf, ftm), the intellectual potential of family and friends, and finally a gracious or unkind nature that bestows a specific beauty.
2019,
Klaudia Newerna,
Polish,
Original title: "P. La mia adolescenza trans" (P. My trans adolescence) by Fumettibrutti.
After "Explicit Novel", Josephine Yole Signorelli raises the stakes, deciding to tell her own story with brutal honesty. And it is the story of a teenager discovering her gender identity, in the "zero years". The acceptance of one's body against the background of school, bullying, family and social life, highs, online dating, sex and "cupio dissolve". And finally awareness and transformation, love - first of all towards oneself.
This comic tells a very powerful and important story, and that Yole's story can make the average reader reflect on a lot of false beliefs that they may have about the trans reality.
2019,
Fumettibrutti,
Italian,
Josephine Yole Signorelli,
"O parque das irmãs magníficas" (The Park of the Magnificent Sisters) is the Portuguese language edition of "Las malas" (The Bad Girls) published in Argentina in 2019 by Camila Sosa Villada.
From the Argentine author Camila Sosa Villada, a book of love and affection: when we finish the last page, we want the whole world to read it too! When she arrived in the city of Córdoba to study at the university, Argentine author Camila Sosa Villada decided to go to Parque Sarmiento during the night. She was scared to death, thinking that the brutal verdict she had heard from her father could come to fruition at any moment: "One day they will knock on this door to warn me that they found you dead, thrown into a ditch." For him, this was the only possible destination for a boy who dressed as a woman.
2019,
Argentina,
Camila Sosa Villada,
Portuguese,
Original title: "Travesties-kamikaze" (Transvestites-suicide bombers) by Josée Yvon.
What underlies the whole book is that you have to cross-dress to live: to cross-dress to survive, to exist; You can never be yourself, you always have to change your personality to live in a society. - Josée Yvon
"Francine thought of all her friends: the crossers, the killed, the abused, the stupid, the wonderful. These and a host of others are the facets that sparkle, the insects that swarm, caught in the gear of the margins, within transvesties-kamikaze."
"All the situations and characters described in this book are in no way part of fiction and any resemblance to living or dead people or real places is intended and written to represent them."
The fragments of stories, poems, and collages that make up Transvesties-kamikaze make it a charged, degenerate and powerful object. Reality appears in close-up, in pieces; The thread of events dissolves in the night and in alcohol, in rape and stabbings, drugs and medicines. For Francine, Gina, Brigitte, Jasmine, Josée Yvon's furious and pictorial narration is a den, a place pierced by "holes in the plaster that crumbles, but comfortable, warm, weird, attractive, perhaps a family". And she added, 'I'm a claim when I run out of gas.'
2019,
Canada,
French,
Josée Yvon,
Original title: "Io volevo andare nella foresta. Storie di vita per una sociologia dell'esperienza trans" (I wanted to go to the forest. Life stories for a sociology of trans experience) by Celeste Papuli.
The aim of the book is to turn to those who, through their body, experience the trans condition. For a long time the "expert knowledge" has monopolized the discourses on the subject and also for this reason, through the collection of life stories of trans subjectivity, the book proposes a sociological reflection on the meaning that experience assumes directly for those who tell themselves.
2019,
Celeste Papuli,
Italian,
Original title: "Att våga blomma ut: Att få leva ifred i sin egen identitet är långt ifrån en självklart" (Dare to blossom: Being allowed to live in peace in one's own identity is far from given) by Milla Johansson.
Milla lived with a male identity for 40 years. But something was wrong. At first, it was mostly a longing that she didn't understand. In her younger teens, she began to understand what it was all about and from about the age of 20-25 and up to 40 life became more and more unbearable as she forced herself to live in a male identity while wanting to live as the woman she knew herself as. The male identity that she felt society expected of her.
In the end, the whole world collapsed and she ended up in addiction and a deep quagmire of obsessions, compulsions, and anxiety. Years passed and she toiled every day to get back on her feet. It wasn't until she was admitted to the psychiatric emergency room after attempting to commit suicide that she began to turn around. Today, Milla is a much more prosperous woman who is out lecturing about her journey to help others. She does this alongside her full-time job in electromagnetism at a large company, where she is Milla to all her colleagues. Read about Milla's journey and let yourself be touched.
2019,
Milla Johansson,
Swedish,
Original title: "Eu, travesti: Memórias de Luísa Marilac" (I transvestite: Memories of Luisa Marilac) by Luísa Marilac and Nana Queiroz.
Biography of transvestite and activist Luísa Marilac by Nana Queiroz, author of Prisoners who menstruate. Luísa Marilac was born in Minas Gerais and assumed to be a transvestite at the age of 17.
In addition to the traditional traumas associated with the transition of gender in a conservative and lower-class family, she was stabbed seven times at the age of 16, was a victim of sex trafficking in Europe, prostituted herself, raped and arrested more than once. She went to fame after she went viral on YouTube for a video of herself with the catchphrase "And they said I was in the worst".
2019,
Brazil,
Luísa Marilac,
Nana Queiroz,
Portuguese,
