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.
"Dali: 15 Jahre mit Salvador Dali" (Dali: 15 years with Salvador Dali) is the German language edition of "Le Dalí d'Amanda" (Amanda's Dalí), published in 1984.
Amanda Lear (born 1939) is a French singer, television celebrity, actress, and model, known for her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and being a muse of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The book tells about her relationship with Salvador Dalí and presents detailed insights into the 15 years of their relationship.
According to Wikipedia, Amanda's transgender background was confirmed by Salvador Dalí himself, and other well-known artists that used to know Lear earlier in her life. For example, April Ashley, a transgender icon and model, claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lear, whose birth name she stated was "Alain Tap", had worked with her in the Parisian transgender revues Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey, Ashley recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name "Peki d'Oslo".
1984,
Amanda Lear,
April Ashley,
Georges Burou,
German,
Romy Haag,
Original title: "Jan Morris" by Alberto Olmos.
No one expected that James Morris, the only journalist who had reported on the coronation of Everest in 1953, to later work as a war reporter, travel around the world, have five children and consolidate himself at the top of his intrepid and then very masculine profession, would change gender in 1972 in a practically illegal clinic of Dr. Georges Burou in Casablanca, being of her great professional and personal milestones, of her non-militant transsexuality and of her charming old age secluded in a century-old house in the heart of Wales. The story of wanting to be another, another, and, if possible, another one.
2021,
Alberto Olmos,
Georges Burou,
Jan Morris,
Spanish,
"Persistence of Memory: A Personal Biography of Salvador Dali" is the American re-edition of "Le Dalí d'Amanda" (Amanda's Dalí).
Amanda Lear (born 1939) is a French singer, television celebrity, actress, and model, known for her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and being a muse of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The book tells about her relationship with Salvador Dalí and presents detailed insights into the 15 years of their relationship.
According to Wikipedia, Amanda's transgender background was confirmed by Salvador Dalí himself, and other well-known artists that used to know Lear earlier in her life. For example, April Ashley, a transgender icon and model, claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lear, whose birth name she stated was "Alain Tap", had worked with her in the Parisian transgender revues Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey, Ashley recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name "Peki d'Oslo".
1987,
Amanda Lear,
April Ashley,
English,
Georges Burou,
Romy Haag,
Full title: "Madame Arthur" by Marie-Pierre Pruvot. This is the second part of the 5-book series about Marie-Pierre Pruvot's life.
"The story of Bambi's life, her first year at Madame Arthur, begins in January 1960 and spans a period of one year. We find the character of Edouard there, as in Algiers, but we also discover a certain exuberance that flourishes among the cabaret artists, with rivalries, quarrels, derision, and above all the apprenticeship of the profession of the stage.
We discover small restaurants, warm but dangerous, loves... finally the preparation of a tour, the search for a name that makes Carrousel. Discovery of the traveling show which ends in Algiers with a police ban for moral and political reasons (1961 putsch). "
2013,
Bambi,
French,
Georges Burou,
Marie-Pier Ysser,
Marie-Pierre Pruvot,
Full title: "J'inventais ma vie" (I invented my life) by Marie-Pierre Pruvot. This is the first part of the 5-book series about Marie-Pierre Pruvot's life.
"Marie-Pierre Pruvot has had two lives and two careers: one as a teacher, discreet and punctuated by national education schedules; and the other as a reviewer at the Carrousel in the sixties and seventies, where Bambi lit fires on stage and burned with her iron the memory of the men who came to contemplate her plastic. These two professions call on the same talent, and require that we put the world and life on stage to better show our audience how we conceive the world... It is therefore quite naturally that readers will discover this book which mixes the romantic and the real, and in which overlap the events linked to the Algerian war, and those borrowed from the real life of Marie-Pierre. At that time, this part of France beyond the Mediterranean was still bubbling with the aftermath of the war of independence and mentalities were only beginning to hint at the possibility of taking charge of one's destiny... and inventing one's life."
2013,
Bambi,
French,
Georges Burou,
Marie-Pier Ysser,
Marie-Pierre Pruvot,
Full title: "Pleasures of a Tangled Life" by Jan Morris. The book was published in 1989, and it has had many re-editions since then.
"In 1974, when world-renowned travel writer Jan Morris published her immensely popular autobiography "Conundrum" - which describes her gender change - critics wondered what kind of sensibility would result from this extraordinary shift.
"Pleasure of a Tangled Life" provides the answer.
On one level, this book may be read as a fanciful celebration of quotidian pleasures and an invitation to share her private delights. But there is more: a singular memoir unveiling Morris's complex personality, her idiosyncrasies, passions, and obsessions - written in her powerful and original style, possessed of verve and wit and an eye for the telling detail."
1989,
English,
Georges Burou,
Jan Morris,
Full title: "J'inventais ma vie" (I invented my life).
This is Bambi's first book. Bambi is the stage name of Marie-Pierre Pruvot, also known as Marie-Pier Ysser, a French author, dancer, singer, cabaret artist, and transgender woman, born Jean-Pierre Pruvot on 11 November 1935, in Les Issers, Algeria. After having been the cabaret star of the 1950s and 1960s, she resumed her French literature studies and became a professor of Modern Literature in 1974, and devoted herself to writing autofiction (notably as Marie-Pier Ysser).
Jean-Pierre spent his childhood and adolescence in Algeria, growing up in both a rural and urban world, enjoying nature and farm animals, much more than school. When he was 10 years old, his sister, whose clothes he liked to wear, died. His father dies 4 years later. Jean-Pierre Pruvot then lived in a feminine environment, reading a lot, sewing and embroidering. He feels that neither his first name nor his gender matches him.
2003,
Bambi,
France,
French,
Georges Burou,
Marie-Pier Ysser,
Marie-Pierre Pruvot,
Original title: "Histoire des transsexuels en France" (History of Transsexuals in France)
Being the country of the emergence of the transsexual phenomenon at the beginning of the twentieth century, Germany then met the necessary conditions for the implementation of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld's theories on "sexual intermediaries". After the ransacking by the Nazis of the Institute of Sexology, France takes over in Europe: the artist Michel-Marie Poulain announces her change of gender in Voilà and the deported Marie André Schwidenhammer creates the first organization to help transsexuals.
These two pioneers thus laid the foundations for social visibility that reached its peak with the transgender cabaret culture in Paris in the 1950s and 60s when the French discovered the scandalous Beetle. However, even after "sexual liberation", the judicial, police, and psychiatric authorities put in place repression in order to prevent transsexuals from changing their civil status and making their transition in good conditions.
2006,
Bambi,
Coccinelle,
French,
Georges Burou,
Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy,
Marie-Pierre Pruvot,
Maxime Foerster,
Full title: "The First Lady: I Was a Vogue Model and a National Celebrity but I Was Living With a Secret That Was to Shake the World..."
It was the second biography of April Ashley, for the first time written only by herself. However, the book was pulled from the market, after it was discovered that it plagiarized the 1982 book written by Duncan Fallowell and April Ashley titled "April Ashley's Odyssey".
April Ashley (1935–2021) was an English model, actress, cabaret artist, and celebrity. Outed as a transgender woman by The Sunday People newspaper in 1961, she was one of the earliest British people known to have undergone gender reassignment surgery.
2006,
April Ashley,
English,
Georges Burou,
Original title: "Kijk mama, ik dans: 's lands bekendste transseksueel vertelt" (Look mom, I dance: The country's best-known transsexual tells).
"Vanessa van Durme has made choices in her life. Hard choices, painful choices. Choices that caused her parents a lot of grief.
Now she is a celebrated actress who feels her sixtieth birthday approaching. She has fond memories of her work for public and commercial broadcasting, of the comedy see the wrote, and of the wonderful role she played in All India by Alain Platel and Arne Sierens.
Her autobiography regularly brings tears to the eyes of the reader. Sometimes out of sympathy, more often out of laughter."
According to Wikipedia, Vanessa Van Durme (born in 1948) is a Belgian actress and screenwriter. She studied at the Conservatory of Ghent in the drama section and made her stage debut – as a young actor – at Nederlands Toneel Gent (NTG).
2006,
Belgium,
Dutch,
Georges Burou,
Vanessa Van Durme,
Amanda Lear (born 1939) is a French singer, television celebrity, actress, and model, known for her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and being a muse of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.
According to Wikipedia, Amanda's transgender background was confirmed by Salvador Dalí himself, and other well-known artists that used to know Lear earlier in her life. For example, April Ashley, a transgender icon and model, claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lear, whose birth name she stated was "Alain Tap", had worked with her in the Parisian transgender revues Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey, Ashley recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name "Peki d'Oslo".
2006,
Amanda Lear,
English,
Galerie Claudius,
Georges Burou,
Full title: "Jan Morris: Around the World in Eighty Years" by Jan Morris.
"In honor of the 80th birthday of British travel journalist Jan Morris, her colleagues and successors have put together this celebratory, biographical tribute, which explores both the writer and her writing.
By revisiting more than 50 years of descriptions of her travels, her epic three-volume history of the British Empire, and her startling and thoughtful memoir about her sex change, the volume contains many full, intimate insights into her character from renowned contributors, including George Band, Arturo di Stefano, David Fieldhouse, Don Geroge, David Hurn, Pico Iyer, Robert McCrum, Geoffrey Moorhouse, Patrick Nairn, Jim Perrin, Hilary Rubenstein, Colin Thubron, Erica Wagner, Alan Whicker, Simon Winchester, and Peregrine Wortsthorne."
2007,
English,
Georges Burou,
Jan Morris,
Paul Clements,
Original title: "On'na wa tsuitachi ni shite narazu" - 女は一日にしてならず (A woman was not made in a day) by Maki Carrousel (カルーセル 麻紀, Karūseru Maki).
This is the second biography of Maki Carrousel, a Japanese actress, singer, and legend of the Japanese transgender community. She was born Maki Hirahara in 1942, in Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan. She is said to have been the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Japan and a pioneer in changing the family register from male to female.
After dropping out of school, she ran away from home at the age of 15 and started working at gay bars first in Sapporo, and later in Tokyo and Osaka. Ever since she was a teenager, she wanted to be a woman, but gender reassignment surgery was still prohibited in Japan at the time. So when she was 19 years old, she underwent surgical castration i.e. bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles) at a hospital in Osaka.
2005,
Georges Burou,
Japanese,
Maki Carrousel,
Original title: "Μπέττυ" (Betty) by Elizabeth Vakalidou (Ελισάβετ Βακαλίδου), published in 1979. The book was republished in 2007 with the title "Μπέττυ, Καπετάνιος της Ψυχής μου" (Betty, Captain of My Soul).
This book is the story of Elizabeth Vakalidou, also known as Betty, born in 1950, a Greek transgender woman, one of the best-known transgender people in Greece, who publicly promoted her identity and fought for gay and intersex rights. She participated in the founding of the first Greek homosexual organization in Greece, the A.K.O.E. (Greek Gay Liberation Movement), authored two autobiographical books, and appeared in theater and cinema productions. She was also nominated as "Person of the Year" (2007) during the "European Year of Equal Opportunities for All".
1979,
2007,
Elizabeth Vakalidou,
Georges Burou,
Greek,
Original title: "Watashi wa on'na" - 『私は女』(I am a Woman) by Maki Carrousel (カルーセル 麻紀, Karūseru Maki).
This is the third biography of Maki Carrousel, a Japanese actress, singer, and legend of the Japanese transgender community. She was born Maki Hirahara in 1942, in Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan. She is said to have been the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Japan and a pioneer in changing the family register from male to female.
After dropping out of school, she ran away from home at the age of 15 and started working at gay bars first in Sapporo, and later in Tokyo and Osaka. Ever since she was a teenager, she wanted to be a woman, but gender reassignment surgery was still prohibited in Japan at the time. So when she was 19 years old, she underwent surgical castration i.e. bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles) at a hospital in Osaka.
2007,
Coccinelle,
Georges Burou,
Japanese,
Maki Carrousel,
Full title: "Marie parce que c'est joli" (Marie because it's pretty)
"Marie-Pierre's book is the authentic chronicle of a little boy who felt like a little girl, a little girl who became a woman, and a woman who, by dint of tenacity, finds success and meets love.
We follow Marie from her childhood in Algeria to the Carrousel cabaret where she becomes BAMBI, Coccinelle's friend, and the headliner of the show for twenty years.
We follow Marie because she knows how to tell us the simple and exhilarating story of a "transition" that upsets her love and triggers her interest in the university education that leads her to another profession, national education, where she obtains the academic degree and especially the recognition of her former students."
2007,
Bambi,
Christine Jorgensen,
Coccinelle,
France,
French,
Georges Burou,
Lili Elbe,
Marie-Pier Ysser,
Marie-Pierre Pruvot,
Michel Marie Poulain,
Roberta Cowell,
"My Life with Dali" is the English language edition of "Le Dalí d'Amanda" (Amanda's Dalí).
Amanda Lear (born 1939) is a French singer, television celebrity, actress, and model, known for her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and being a muse of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The book tells about her relationship with Salvador Dalí and presents detailed insights into the 15 years of their relationship.
According to Wikipedia, Amanda's transgender background was confirmed by Salvador Dalí himself, and other well-known artists that used to know Lear earlier in her life. For example, April Ashley, a transgender icon and model, claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lear, whose birth name she stated was "Alain Tap", had worked with her in the Parisian transgender revues Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey, Ashley recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name "Peki d'Oslo".
1985,
Amanda Lear,
April Ashley,
English,
Georges Burou,
Romy Haag,
Original title: "Watashi o nuga sete" - 『私を脱がせて』(Take Me Off) by Maki Carrousel (カルーセル 麻紀, Karūseru Maki).
This is the first biography of Maki Carrousel, a Japanese actress, singer, and legend of the Japanese transgender community. She was born Maki Hirahara in 1942, in Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan. She is said to have been the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Japan and a pioneer in changing the family register from male to female.
After dropping out of school, she ran away from home at the age of 15 and started working at gay bars first in Sapporo, and later in Tokyo and Osaka. Ever since she was a teenager, she wanted to be a woman, but gender reassignment surgery was still prohibited in Japan at the time. So when she was 19 years old, she underwent surgical castration i.e. bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles) at a hospital in Osaka.
2002,
Coccinelle,
Georges Burou,
Japanese,
Maki Carrousel,
"L'Amant Dalí: Ma vie avec Salvador Dalí" (The Lover Dalí: My life with Salvador Dalí) is another book by Amandra Lear, following her first book "Le Dalí d'Amanda" (Amanda's Dalí).
Amanda Lear (born 1939) is a French singer, television celebrity, actress, and model, known for her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and being a muse of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The book tells about her relationship with Salvador Dalí and presents detailed insights into the 15 years of their relationship.
According to Wikipedia, Amanda's transgender background was confirmed by Salvador Dalí himself, and other well-known artists that used to know Lear earlier in her life. For example, April Ashley, a transgender icon and model, claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lear, whose birth name she stated was "Alain Tap", had worked with her in the Parisian transgender revues Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey, Ashley recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name "Peki d'Oslo".
1994,
Amanda Lear,
April Ashley,
French,
Georges Burou,
Romy Haag,
"Dalí глазами Аманды" (Dalí through the eyes of Amanda) is the Russian language edition of "Le Dalí d'Amanda" (Amanda's Dalí), published in 1984.
Amanda Lear (born 1939) is a French singer, television celebrity, actress, and model, known for her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and being a muse of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The book tells about her relationship with Salvador Dalí and presents detailed insights into the 15 years of their relationship.
According to Wikipedia, Amanda's transgender background was confirmed by Salvador Dalí himself, and other well-known artists that used to know Lear earlier in her life. For example, April Ashley, a transgender icon and model, claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lear, whose birth name she stated was "Alain Tap", had worked with her in the Parisian transgender revues Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey, Ashley recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name "Peki d'Oslo".
2005,
Amanda Lear,
April Ashley,
Georges Burou,
Romy Haag,
Russian,
