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.
Full title: "Eva's World: A Real Woman’s Life" by Ella Marques.
This is the third book by Ella Marques. "I was born a boy, from Venus: It's time to be yourself" (2017) was the first autobiography of Ella Marques. In 2020, she published her second book: "Coming Home to Venus: The story of a woman transitioning to her real self".
"Eva’s World is the story of a transgender pansexual hard-working woman that travels the world for business and pleasure. She and her three friends Linda, Olympia and Victoria come together regularly, talk about their lives, their loves and their expectations. Two of these girls are transgender, the other two are cisgender - their lives and expectations are similar, just some small differences. This is a positive book about life as a very privileged transgender person, about traveling, about fun, expectations but above all about love. Yes, transgender women are women. They live, they love, and they can be quite normal. All I ask is that you open your eyes."
2020,
Ella Marques,
English,
Interview,
Full title: "Empowering Differences: Leveraging Your Differences to Impact Change" by Ashley T Brundage.
"Empowering Differences is the intentional action of using power and authority for yourself or others while positioning ways in which you are not the same as the people around you. Using your differences, what makes you unique, to empower yourself and others to move your career forward. Follow author, Ashley T Brundage, as she puts Empowering Differences into action. She has been on her own journey of self exploration and was forced to find out how she fits into this world. She started her careers as a means of survival and has quickly risen through each position.
She celebrated her authenticity, empowered herself, and others, to create a stronger community. Incorporating the 10 key empowering actions covered within this book, Ashley advanced her career from a part time bank teller to a vice president of the national diversity and inclusion team at a major financial services corporation in less than 5 years. Everyone’s journey will look different, but these methods can produce similar results and the takeaways of the book can be applied to anyone. Take the first step to accelerate your career by empowering your differences."
2020,
Ashley T Brundage,
English,
Full title: "Wo-Man: The Power of Non-Disclosure" by Malikah R. Harris.
"Malikah R. Harris, born and raised in Newark, New Jersey is an author, writer, producer, director, vocalist, comedian, and a motivational speaker, who started her career in magazine writing and as a blogger. She has written everything from positive quotes to historical events. Her style of writing caught the public eye due to her poetic play on words."
"Malikah R. Harris, born and raised in Newark, New Jersey is an author, writer, producer, director, vocalist, comedian, and a motivational speaker, who started her career in writing as a blogger and for magazines. She has written everything from positive quotes to historical events. Her style of writing became a hit within the public eye because of her poetic play on words."
2020,
English,
Malikah R. Harris,
Full title: "If There's No Heaven" by Barbara Marie Minney.
"After almost thirty six years, I began writing poetry again as a means of documenting and processing my thoughts, feelings, struggles, and triumphs during my transition to living authentically as the woman that God always intended me to be. I began my transition at the age of sixty three after repressing my true gender identity for over sixty years, and the poetry in this book charts the first two years of that journey. My poetry is also a challenge to stereotypical beliefs and to accept other people for who and what they are. I am a Christian and conservative leaning, which has caused me to be shunned by my community. My poetry is also a challenge to unapologetically and proudly accept and love yourself for who you are."
2020,
Barbara Marie Minney,
English,
Interview,
Original title: "Transcartografia: Atrizes e Atores Trans na Cena Teatral" (Transcartography: Trans Actresses and Actors in the Paperback Theatre) by Jerônimo Vieira de Lima Silva.
The work "Transcartography: Trans Actresses and Actors in the Theatrical Scene" starts with a focus on the LGBTTQ+ movement in Brazil and Portugal to analyze the theatrical scenario in both countries.
Official statistics and data on transphobia are presented, as well as a mapping of transsexual actors and actresses inserted in the political and social contexts of these countries. The aspects of theatricality and performativity that are inserted in the construction of genders are also listed, especially with regard to the transsexual.
2020,
Brazil,
Jerônimo Vieira de Lima Silva,
Portugal,
Portuguese,
Original title: "Vamos por más: mocha celis na experiência educacional das travestis e transexuais" (Let's go for more: mocha celis in the educational experience of transvestites and transsexuals) by Luana Pagano Peres Molina.
"In Brazil, we see alarming data that show an escalation in violence and murder of trans populations (transvestites, transgenders, and transsexuals). The public policies of the different governments that have passed through the country, moved by so-called right-wing and left-wing ideologies, have done little or nothing to change this scenario.
"Geni e o Zepelim" is a Brazilian song composed in 1978 by Brazilian composer Chico Buarque to be part of the musical Ópera do Malandro. The character Geni is described as being a transvestite who is constantly harassed by her community, "who can give it to anyone", who is "made to be beaten" and "good for spitting". The song's catchphrase: "Throw a stone at Geni" has become well known in the popular songbook and is repeated jokingly whenever someone is spoken of who is the target of public execration."
2020,
Argentina,
Brazil,
Luana Pagano Peres Molina,
Portuguese,
Full title: "Transsexuality in Turkey: The Representation of Transsexual Identities in Contemporary Turkish Films" by Hüma Saruhan.
"LGBT issues in Turkey are often ignored by the government entities and mostly misrepresented in the Turkish mass media. Transsexual subjects, often erroneously identified as transvestites, yet have been subjected to various types of violence and stereotyping throughout the history of the modern Turkish Republic. The mass media undoubtedly played a part in enforcing many negative and/or erroneous stereotypes in the minds of the audience. Yet, there are some Turkish films that on the surface aim to bring to light the hard conditions transsexual subjects face in their daily lives. Apart from reviewing the background of transsexual issues in the Turkish history and analyzing the approach of the Turkish media in their treatment of transsexual subjects, I also aimed to establish the extent in which the media could be the cause of the re/creation and re/production of the transsexual image, gender roles and violence within the heterosexist and transphobic social structure in Turkey.
2020,
English,
Hüma Saruhan,
Turkey,
Full title: "Trans America: A Counter-History" by Barry Reay.
"Trans seems to be everywhere in American culture. Yet there is little understanding of how this came about. Are people aware that there were earlier periods of gender flexibility and contestability in American history? How well known is it that a previous period of trans visibility in the 1960s and early 1970s faced a vehement backlash right at the time that trans, in the form of what was then termed transvestism and transsexuality, seemed to be so ascendant? Was there transness before transsexuality was named in the 1950s and transgender emerged in the 1990s?
Barry Reay explores this history: from a time before trans in the nineteenth century to the transsexual moment of the 1960s and 1970s, the transgender turn of the 1990s, and the so-called tipping point of current culture. It is a rich and varied history, where same-sex desires and identities, cross-dressing, and transsexual and transgender identities jostled for recognition. It is a history that is not at all flattering to US psychiatric and surgical practices. Arguing for the complexity of a trans past and present, Trans America will be a groundbreaking work for the trans community, as well as anyone interested in the history of medicine, sexuality, psychology and psychiatry."
2020,
Barry Reay,
English,
"Mama Black Widow" is the French language edition of "Mama Black Widow" by Iceberg Slim, published in 2013. The book was translated into French by Gérard Henri.
"Mama Black Widow tells the tragic story of Otis Tilson, a stunning black drag queen trapped in a cruel queer ghetto underworld. In hopes of escaping the racial bigotry and economic injustice of the South, Otis’ family journeys north from their plantation to an urban promised land. Once in Chicago Otis and his brother and sisters become prisoners to a wasteland of violence, crime, prostitution and rape. This is the gut-wrenching tale of the destruction of a family and the truest portrayal of homosexuality in the ghetto ever told."
2020,
Drag queen,
French,
Iceberg Slim,
Otis Tilson,
Original title: "Tragisch, aber geil 2.0" (Tragic but Horny 2.0) by Barbie Breakout.
""Tragic, but horny 2.0" is the completely revised and supplemented remake of Barbie's first autobiography from 2012. Full of unvarnished truths, touching observations and roaring comical insights into the life of a unique drag queen."
"A glimpse into Bärbel's world. I learned a lot about them. And in fact, one or two things about me. Thank you for the mirror you hold up to me, or to all of us. And thanks for the inspiration." Conchita Wurst
"A book like a best friend: sometimes wise, sometimes hilarious, when necessary, lovingly vulgar and always, always honest." Paul Schulz
2020,
Barbie Breakout,
Drag queen,
German,
Full title: "Rasaathi: The other side of a transgender" by Sasindran Kallinkeel.
"They seem a loud bunch of people, a socially unwanted class whose presence is not welcome almost anywhere till a wedding or childbirth happens. But try to delve deeper and you will understand how day-to-day existence is a struggle for people who weren’t lucky enough to be born as fully formed males or females. Forced to live in shanties far from city limits, they don’t have fixed jobs and can’t even dare to live a normal life.
And yet, life goes on for them despite the hardships that they mask with garish makeup and bright saris. They are sensible like you and me - they laugh, cry and fall in love. They are just like us, in more ways than you know. You will realise all that and more when you read this touching tale. Rasaathi is the story of every aravani, of every transgender"
2020,
English,
India,
Sasindran Kallinkeel,
Original title: "Transexuais em telenovelas: a construção de personagens na Rede Globo" (Transsexuals in soap operas: the construction of characters in Rede Globo) by Lalo Nopes Homrich.
"Lalo Nopes Homrich's work does not detract from the long tradition of studies on representations of minorities on television, particularly in soap operas, but it does something so far unprecedented. It sheds light on the field of production – the social production of representations – by interviewing the professionals involved with the construction of three transsexual characters in Rede Globo soap operas: Ramona, a trans woman, in the soap opera As Filhas da Mãe (2001); Dorothy, a trans woman, in the soap opera Geração Brasil (2014); and, finally, Ivan, trans men, in the soap opera A Força do Querer (2017).
2020,
Brazil,
Lalo Nopes Homrich,
Portuguese,
Original title: "Bajubá: Memórias e diálogos das travestis" (Bajubá: Memories and dialogues of transvestites) by Gabriela Costa Araujo.
In "Bajubá: memories and dialogues of transvestites" we find a study on Bajubá, a language used by the LGBT community, which has its origin in the African language Yoruba-Nagô, based on the lexicon of the Portuguese language, with different arrangements. The circulation of language, its permanence, popularization and the meanings triggered by transvestites through bajubá show that gender, race, ethnicity, generation and class intersect in the origin and flows of this dialect.
This publication is aimed at researchers, teachers and those interested in reflecting and (re)thinking about the language, based on bajubá, of the memories of transvestites and the LGBT community in the country.
2020,
Gabriela Costa Araujo,
Portuguese,
Original title: "Trans*" by ÉPICÈNE.
The book deconstructs stereotypes related to transgender people by presenting 46 portraits of trans* people from all over Switzerland.
The portraits consist of a photograph taken by Noura Gauper and an interview conducted in one of the three main national languages by a professional journalist. They concern 23 women and 23 men, 20 in French-speaking Switzerland, 20 in German-speaking Switzerland and 6 in Ticino.
In concrete terms, our goal is to fight against discrimination and exclusion of transgender people at the social level. Currently, the suicide rate among trans* people is 10 times higher than that of the cisgender population and unemployment is 6 times higher. This work, which lasted more than two years, shows that trans* people, if they can be themselves, are perfectly integrated people, no different from the rest of the population.
2020,
ÉPICÈNE,
French,
Switzerland,
Original title: "Travestis: Carne, Tinta e Papel" (Transvestites: Flesh, Ink and Paper) by Elias Ferreira Veras.
Contrary to what we find in most of the writings of historians, in this book bodies are present, as it presents the historical account of the regime of bodies, of the models of corporeality, of the techniques of body production, of the technologies of fabrication of bodies, which are present and changed between the 70s and 80s of the twentieth century, more specifically in Brazil and in the city of Fortaleza, in the state of Ceará.
The book focuses on the history of the production of transgressive bodies, transgressive bodies, and trans bodies. It deals with the public emergence of the transvestite subject, how this place of subject was historically produced and inhabited in Brazil.
2020,
Brazil,
Elias Ferreira Veras,
Portuguese,
Original title: "Taṉujā: Īḻat tirunaṅkaiyiṉ payaṇamum pōrāṭṭamum: An autobiography" தனுஜா: ஈழத் திருநங்கையின் பயணமும் போராட்டமும்: an autobiography (Tanuja: The Journey and Struggle of an Eelam Transgender. An Autobiography) by Tan̲ujā Ciṅkam.
The book is an autobiography of a transgender woman from Sri Lanka who migrated to Germany.
"During those days in Malaysia, I asked myself a thousand questions about my life. In Malaysia, I saw transsexuals who became sex workers at a young age and ended up orphaned on the streets in their old age. I saw Shilab Patti in Europe who was living like a mental patient.
2020,
Sri Lanka,
Tamil,
Tan̲ujā Ciṅkam,
Original title: "Quand Un Suisse Change De Sexe" (When a Swiss man changes sex) by Laure Viel.
""So you think you're a woman?" Dr. Beaugrand's question had destabilized Laurent V. A lump in his throat prevented him from uttering the slightest hint of an answer. Dressed in velvet trousers and a navy sweater, Laurent was acutely aware that he did not look like the one he had always been convinced he was.
Yet he would never forget that day, the first in a journey that would make him, he hoped, a singular being, the only Parisian journalist who had been a soldier in the Swiss army. A journey that would also take him to faraway lands. Laure Viel's story is about transsexuality without taboos or pathos. There is no glitter in this journey either, but a quest for oneself, where introspection does not forbid self-mockery.
2020,
French,
Laure Viel,
Switzerland,
Original title: "Nästan i mål!: en komisk transition" (Almost There!: A Comic Transition) by Olivia Skoglund.
The comic is a unique depiction of an ongoing gender transition told with lightness, dark humor and cartoonish drawings. "Why do you want to be a girl? It sucks to be a girl!!!"
Olivia argues with herself about biology, norms, ideals of beauty and gender identity. She lies on the sofa of a psychologist and talks about her upbringing, about her everyday life as a trans woman and compulsively tells comical anecdotes about her life.
2020,
Olivia Skoglund,
Swedish,
Full title: "On The Science of Changing Sex: A Layman’s Guide to Transsexuality and Transgenderism (Understanding Transsexuality)" by Kay Brown.
"Ten years in the making, well researched, pulling together peer reviewed science and personal experiences, On The Science of Changing Sex explains the deeper, less known, aspects of transsexuality and transgenderism. Sure to spark controversy, it delves deeply into the hidden world and secrets, often suppressed, the public doesn't hear about. This book is NOT the typical "born in the wrong body" transgender story.
The book covers the scientific evidence that there is more than one kind of "transgender", that there are two distinct and non-overlapping etiologies leading to gender dysphoria, a diagnoses that was coined in the early 1970s, yet eschews recently introduced unscientific constructs such as "sex dysphoria". You will also learn about the way that cross-dressing men develop into autogynephilic transwomen."
2020,
English,
Kay Brown,
Full title: "Rainbow's End: A Parent's Guide To Understanding Transsexual Children And Teens (Understanding Transsexuality)" by Kay Brown.
"Raising children is a sacred trust. But how does one raise transsexual children in an age of disinformation and transphobic propaganda? Kay Brown, herself a former transkid, having been diagnosed as a transsexual as a minor in the early 70's, later to become a foster / adoptive mother, writes with candor of the issues faced by parents of gender atypical and dysphoric children and teens.
Sure to spark controversy, in her book, Kay Brown not only offers insight into the minds of transkids, but also into the vitriol they and their parents face at school and on the internet. She lists the lies found in social media, books, magazines, and counters them with facts gleaned from decades of research and activism aimed at helping transsexual youth live a better life."
2020,
English,
Kay Brown,
