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: "O caso Bruna: Gênero, transexualidades e opinião pública" (The case of Bruna: Gender, transsexualities and public opinion) by Ubirajara de None Caputo.
"Transvestites and transsexual women demonstrate for the right to use women's restrooms open to the public in a shopping mall in São Paulo. The act has repercussions on a news site of great circulation, provoking the reaction of hundreds of readers. Ubirajara Caputo analyzed the opinions of this group of people, most of whom were against the right of use motivated by religious and social conceptions or by attributing to the plaintiffs a dubious character and distorted aspects of health and body.
2022,
Brazil,
Portuguese,
Ubirajara de None Caputo,
Full title: "We Are Mermaids: Poems" by Stephanie Burt.
"Stephanie Burt’s poems in We Are Mermaids are never just one thing. Instead, they revel in their multiplicity, their interconnectedness, their secret powers to become much more than they at first seem. In these poems, punctuation marks make arguments for their utility and their rights to exist. Frozen isn’t simply another Disney animated musical but “the Most Trans Movie Ever.” Mermaids, werewolves, and superheroes don’t just fret over divided natures and secret identities, but celebrate their wholeness, their unique abilities, and their erotic potential. Flowers in this collection bloom into exactly what they are meant to be―revealing themselves, like bleeding hearts, beyond their given names.
With humor and insight, Burt’s poems have always cherished and examined the things of this world, both real and imagined objects of fascination and desire. In this resplendent new collection, her observation and care flourish into her most fulfilled book yet. These poems shake off indecisiveness and doubt to reach joys through romance and family, through nature (urban and otherwise), and through imaginative community. We Are Mermaids is a trans book, a fangirl book, a book about coming together. It’s also Burt’s best book."
2022,
English,
Stephanie Burt,
Original title: "At Performe Transkønnet Vrede" (Performing transgender anger) by Gry Stokkendahl Dalgas.
""Performing transgender anger" is Gry Stokkendahl Dalga's polyphonic, furious, and political call for better conditions for transgender people. Poetry, translations, essays, and fanfiction are intertwined in Gry Stokkendahl Dalga's work."
""Performing transgender anger", which with tenderness, indignation, and rage, cries out about the conditions and position of transgender people in society. Through the inclusion of references to other works, science, and a wide range of transgender people, the book portrays society's neglect of a large and vulnerable population while pointing the way to a better future."
2022,
Danish,
Gry Stokkendahl Dalgas,
Original title: "Myśli innej kobiety" (Thoughts of Another Woman) by Kristine Turowska and Damian Drewniak.
A beautifully published album with the poetry of Kristine Turowska - a transgender woman, enriched with unique photographs by the master of lyrical photography - Damian Drewniak.
This album is a unique book, not only because of the author, but also because of the form that combines lyrics not only with words, but also with images. It is a must-read for sensitive people, especially those who are familiar with the world of transgender women. The album contains seventeen poems, twelve of which are illustrated with photographs, as well as a mini-story about happiness entitled "The Little Match Girl" with another four photographs. The book has a format of 21x21cm and contains 44 pages.
2022,
Kristine Turowska,
Polish,
Full title: "A Small Step in a Long Journey: A Memoir by Akkai Padmashali" by Akkai Padmashali.
"More than just an autobiography or memoir, this is a powerful and passionate account of one woman’s battle to claim her identity and place in society. In A Small Step in a Long Journey, Akkai Padmashali, a trans rights activist and campaigner, thinker, writer, poet, and actor, throws out a challenge to society, demanding not sympathy or pity but acceptance, recognition, and respect.
Brutally honest and self-critical, Akkai’s writing is a political act in which she lays bare the hurt, humiliation, confusion, insult, love, solidarity and joy that went into making her who she is today.
Time and again Akkai asserts that her story is not just her story. What we call gender and sexuality, she says, ‘is a journey we all travel’, one that connects our personal and political lives, and one that helps us to face difficult, disturbing questions about prejudice and privilege."
2022,
Akkai Padmashali,
English,
India,
Original title: "La torre de marfil 2: Experiencias de una niña transsexual" (The Ivory Tower: Experiences of a Transsexual Girl 2) by Ernesto Rubio Sánchez.
"This second part of "La torre de marfil" invites the reading public to fully delve into the development of the central character's life, accompanying her from her childhood to her adulthood in the midst of the Movida Madrileña and in a time marked by discrimination where there was no concept of transsexuality and all sexual behavior towards the same gender was synonymous with AIDS.
Within this medium, our character will try to assert her right to live as she perceives herself. Can she make it? And if so, in an environment that will demand her courage, conviction and militancy, will she enjoy the same rights as everyone else or will she continue to be a second-class citizen? However, this fight does not end on the last page of this installment; In the next one, titled Ramón is my daughter, the characters and their stories will mature, always trying to manage their lives in a society that, despite proclaiming itself progressive, still hides the prejudice of a divided world."
2022,
Ernesto Rubio Sánchez,
Spanish,
Original title: "Mujeres trans*, violencia y cárcel" (Trans* Women, Violence and Prison) by Chloé Constant.
"From a critical feminist perspective, in this work the author presents methodological reflections on socio-anthropological work in prison and analyzes the experiences of trans* women who were imprisoned in a men's prison in Mexico City. Through a transdisciplinary dialogue, which recovers the perspective of experiences from body and gender studies, she explores the multiple forms of violence that trans * women have experienced before, during and after prison.
Likewise, she shows how the prison constitutes an institution permeated by power and organized according to specific laws, which reproduces and deepens gender inequalities and transphobic violence, attempting to impose a unique way of living gender. This book contributes to studies on the prison system and gender violence in Mexico, showing us how trans* women face social structures that constrain and violate them, and how they explore spaces for resistance."
2022,
Chloé Constant,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Original title: "Tierra amarga" (Bitter Land) by Kayla Casanova.
"Kayla's journey begins in the south of dark Italy in the 80s. As a being of light that she has been since she was born, she decided to seek her true happiness. Always happy, positive and with a different vision of life, she will manage to overcome the obstacles that she will encounter from bullying, anorexia, homophobia, transphobia and all the other phobias that will come across in her life.
But nothing manages to break her goal, but instead gives her energy to turn her into what she is today, a being of peace, with enough spark and strength to face any setback that she or those around her may suffer."
2022,
Italy,
Kayla Casanova,
Spanish,
Full title: "A Working Class Family Ages Badly" by Juno Roche.
"Juno Roche has had a remarkable life. They were born in Peckham in the 1960s, into a working-class family who dabbled in minor criminality. The only one of their siblings to go to university, shortly after beginning their course at Brighton they were diagnosed with HIV, then a death sentence. They spent much of their younger life caught up in serious drug addiction, addiction financed often by sex work, but recovered and, after working for some years as a teacher, have for a long time now been a writer and successful campaigner.
Through a series of interconnecting essays covering a range of major topics, but with reference to the intensely personal - pubic lice, drug smuggling on budget airlines, the painful process of dilation after gender reassignment surgery - Juno Roche seeks to debunk complacent preconceptions and radically hone in on our essential humanity. This is beautiful, vulnerable, often very funny writing which, despite the extremeness of the writer's own experience, is constantly, reassuringly relatable. Destructive impulses, sexual and romantic awkwardness, ill equipped parents and a constant sense of feeling out of sorts in and with the world, there is a universality to much of this, and that feels crucially important."
2022,
English,
Juno Roche,
"Ladyboys of Thailand: An Anthropological Approach" is the English language version of "Ladyboys de Thaïlande: Une approche anthropologique" by Jean-Pascal Huvé and Franck Poupart.
It is estimated that between half a million and one million "kathoeys" live in Thailand. All of them, from a very young age, have had the feeling of being little girls trapped in boys' bodies and have never stopped assuming or claiming their femininity.
Why in Thailand, why so many, why so pretty?
The authors met and interviewed many ladyboys, whether they were veterinarians, escorts, cabaret dancers or political science graduates, but also with academics, an anthropologist specializing in Kathoeys in Chiang Mai or a researcher from the University of Liège whose laboratory studies the neuro-hormonal mechanisms underlying sexual behavior.
2022,
English,
Franck Poupart,
Jean-Pascal Huvé,
Original title: مروری بر زندگی تراجنسیتی ها (A Review of Transgender Life) by Mehri Shahhosseini.
"This book contains information received from transgender people and experts in this field, and it is about the situation of people whose internal gender identity is in conflict with the gender they were assigned at birth; Therefore, they always think about how to make changes in their body to achieve the desired sexual characteristics, according to their soul and spirit.
To put it more simply, transgenders are people who have a healthy soul in a body that they do not consider to be their own, which leads to a constant conflict between their soul and body. These people always think that their souls are in captivity of a body that does not belong to them, and this contradiction imposes an unfair struggle on their lives."
2022,
Iran,
Mehri Shahhosseini,
Persian,
Original title: "La felicidad es terrible" (Happiness is Terrible) by Lizy Tagliani.
"At some point in 2021, Hernán Casciari realized that Lizy Tagliani was (in addition to a lot of things) a writer. She was on the radio program Perros de la calle. The two shared that space and Casciari was fascinated by the way Lizy recounted the anecdotes that made up her life. In an intuitive and masterful way, each story had an introduction, conflict and outcome, with the detail that all these stories exhibited the surreal and terrible way in which Lizy had carried out her existence.
Convinced that these narratives could not literally remain in the air, Casciari decided to transfer Lizy's world to paper. For that, together with Josefina Licitra—editor of Orsai and this book—they met with Lizy several times, recorder in hand, and asked her to tell the story of her life from the beginning. The result is this book: an editorial record of the wonderful novel (crazy and coherent, hilarious and dark) that Lizy kept in her head. And today, like an exquisite banquet, it reaches the hands of readers. Let them enjoy it."
2022,
Argentina,
Lizy Tagliani,
Spanish,
Full title: "Minoritarian Liberalism: A Travesti Life in a Brazilian Favela" by Moisés Lino e Silva.
"A mesmerizing ethnography of the largest favela in Rio, where residents articulate their own politics of freedom against the backdrop of multiple forms of oppression.
Normative liberalism has promoted the freedom of privileged subjects, those entitled to rights—usually white, adult, heteronormative, and bourgeois—at the expense of marginalized groups, such as Black people, children, LGBTQ people, and slum dwellers.
In this visceral ethnography of Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Moisés Lino e Silva explores what happens when liberalism is challenged by people whose lives are impaired by normative understandings of liberty. He calls such marginalized visions of freedom “minoritarian liberalism,” a concept that stands in for overlapping, alternative modes of freedom—be they queer, favela, or peasant."
2022,
Brazil,
English,
Moisés Lino e Silva,
Full title: "My Transgender Journey" by Robbie Gold.
"This is a true story with some minor alterations to protect people’s identities. It is a tale about my own journey into transgender and my eventual decision to come out. It is hoped that others can share my experiences, relate to them and perhaps take comfort from some of them. The book has some BDSM content but is only used to put my story into context, it's about my experiences, trials and tribulations of coming out and living as a female full time. I hope you enjoy my little story. "
2022,
English,
Robbie Gold,
Original title: "You have never seen a dancer like Voo Doo: Das unglaubliche Leben des Willy Pape: Das unglaubliche Leben des Willi Pape" (You have never seen a dancer like Voo Doo: The Incredible Life of Willy Pape: The Incredible Life of Willi Pape) by Jens Dobler.
"Magnus Hirschfeld wrote in his study The Transvestites (1910/12): "The young transvestite Willi Pape, whose predisposition became known through a suicide attempt in women's clothes. His parents were informed by the author of his peculiar condition, and then allowed him to go to the vaudeville, where he has since performed with great success as a snake dancer."
Willy Pape (1891–1940) was the dance phenomenon of the vaudeville stages of the 1920s in Berlin, Zurich, Paris and Vienna under his stage name Voo Doo. Man or woman? That was always the question. Classic female actor or early example of trans*, queer or non-binary? Voo Doo has always been more of a stage than a tabloid, more of a top performer than a starlet, more of a diligent worker than a salon hero. Eventually, he opened a club whose guests included Klaus Mann. Escaping the Nazis with a black eye, Pape disappeared into oblivion, but was never completely forgotten. Jens Dobler tells the story of the incredible life of Willy Pape alias Voo Doo, and at the same time takes a foray into the great era of European variety culture."
2022,
German,
Jens Dobler,
Magnus Hirschfeld,
Voo Doo,
Willi Pape,
Original title: "Soy una tonta por quererte" (I'm a fool for loving you) by Camila Sosa Villada.
"In the middle of the 90s, a woman earns her living as a surrogate bride for gay men. In a Harlem smoking room, a Latina transvestite becomes intimately acquainted with none other than Billie Holiday. A group of rugby players haggle over the price of a night of sex and in return get their comeuppance. Nuns, grandmothers, children and dogs are never what they seem... The nine stories that make up this book are inhabited by quirky and deeply human characters who confront an ominous reality in ways as strange as themselves.
Soy una tonta por quererte confirms that Camila Sosa Villada is one of the most powerful and original voices in contemporary literature. Owner of a dazzling and daring imagination, she is capable of both speaking the language of a victim of the Mexican Inquisition and of building a dystopian universe where transvestite existence takes its revenge. Owner of a unique style, Sosa crosses the boundaries between reality and magic in these tales, honoring the oral tradition with unparalleled ease and solidity."
2022,
Argentina,
Camila Sosa Villada,
Spanish,
Original title: "Ainda Há Uma Chance" (There's still a chance) by Fernando Silveira De Melo.
Get to know the story of Fernanda Resteles narrated by herself, in the 57 chapters of this book. She does not spare the reader from knowing every detail of her life, both on the streets and in the intimacy of her home. In these pages you will understand what the struggle of a transsexual woman is like when she is abandoned by those who should protect her the most: her family.
Fernanda tells her entire trajectory since she was 13 years old, when she had to leave home so as not to suffer more mistreatment simply because she assumed her transsexual condition. She entered prostitution so as not to die of hunger, survived on the streets, was almost murdered several times, took refuge in drugs, got good friends, but also enemies and had to flee Rio de Janeiro because of a crime she did not commit.
2022,
Brazil,
Fernanda Resteles,
Fernando Silveira De Melo,
Portuguese,
Original title: "Contos Profícuos" (Fruitful Tales) by Lupita Amorim, Melissa Cruz, Angie Hope, Luisa Lamar, Sophie Silva, and Raphaely Luz.
Why is there so much intolerance and hatred against trans people? Why is there such inhumanity to these people, putting them on the margins of society? This book seeks to unravel these questions, argued by the organizer of the work.
Therefore, Raphaely collects and transcribes stories told orally by transvestites from Mato Grosso, in order to humanize their stories and show our readers that transsexuals are people who have hearts, dreams and hope, as well as show how hard their lives are to reach any step of progress.
2022,
Angie Hope,
Brazil,
Luisa Lamar,
Lupita Amorim,
Melissa Cruz,
Portuguese,
Raphaely Luz,
Sophie Silva,
Original title: "Ladyboys de Thaïlande: Une approche anthropologique" (Ladyboys of Thailand: An anthropological approach) by Jean-Pascal Huvé and Franck Poupart.
It is estimated that between half a million and one million "kathoeys" live in Thailand. All of them, from a very young age, have had the feeling of being little girls trapped in boys' bodies and have never stopped assuming or claiming their femininity.
Why in Thailand, why so many, why so pretty?
The authors met and interviewed many ladyboys, whether they were veterinarians, escorts, cabaret dancers or political science graduates, but also with academics, an anthropologist specializing in Kathoeys in Chiang Mai or a researcher from the University of Liège whose laboratory studies the neuro-hormonal mechanisms underlying sexual behavior.
2022,
Franck Poupart,
French,
Jean-Pascal Huvé,
Thailand,
Full title: "Sex and Relationships in the 21st Century: A Transsexual's Point of View" by Vanessa Mateo.
"Life after forty. So, the saying is true - life begins at forty. I've never felt sexier and more confident - empowered if you will--in the things I do. Is it pure Italian wisdom when they say "Italians do it better" or is it merely a catchphrase from a Madonna music video from the 1980s? Fast forward to 2017.
Maybe it's time for an upgrade: "Vanessa does it better". For real! Here, in this latest phase of my life - forty-something and fabulous - I share with you my recent adventures and latest conquests with passion and pizzazz, conviction and accuracy and of course, absolute honesty."
2022,
English,
Vanessa Mateo,
