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: "The Yellow Sparrow: Memoir of a Transgender" by Santa Khurai.
"Santa Khurai was seventeen when she decided to start dressing like a woman. Born male, she had always believed herself to be female, and she claimed her feminine identity fiercely and openly. Her bold act of wearing dresses and make-up in public brought down upon her the wrath of her father, insults and ridicule wherever she went, and, frequently, beatings at the hands of the armed forces who are a constant presence in her native Manipur. The humiliation and physical attacks did not deter her. In her words, ‘My desire to be a woman, a beautiful, fashionable woman, was so strong that I was not afraid of challenging anything that came in the way... I felt that I could bear anything but I could not live like a man.’
2023,
English,
India,
Santa Khurai,
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,
Full title: "Transgender in India: Achievers and Survivors" by IAS Dr C K Gariyali and Priyadarshini Rajkumar.
"The book, "Transgender — Achievers and Survivors" is authors’ tribute to the transgender community who have suffered immense indignities and discrimination in India starting from the decline of Mughal Empire when the British Raj imposed the 16th century anti-buggery law upon them.
They were criminalized and prevented from following their traditional profession, wearing female attire or performing in public and reduced to penury and ignominy. This situation continued in free India till 2014, when the Supreme Court passed its momentous judgement.
2021,
English,
IAS Dr C K Gariyali,
India,
Priyadarshini Rajkumar,
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,
Full title: "Our Lives Our Words: Telling Aravani Life Stories" by A. Revathi.
"For long, aravanis or hijras have been the invisible yet hypervisible subjects of a societal gaze -- looked at, talked about, feared, revered, cursed, and imagined. They have largely stood as metaphors, refused individual histories, lives, identities and selves by a society that reduces them to corporeal bodies, stereotypes, and objects of disdain. Yet this gaze has been challenged and subverted time and time again by a community that refuses to be ashamed or see itself as the victim.
Some of the greatest victories in recent history in this battle for rights have been won in Tamil Nadu - the first state in India where the government recognised many of the rights of the hijra community. The stories in this volume chronicle many of the aravanis who were part of this groundbreaking change. Indeed, in Tamil, these stories were some of the first narratives of hijra lives told to, written by and produced entirely by the members of the community themselves. Appearing in English for the first time, these landmark narratives still retain the authenticity, simplicity and rawness of life stories of courage, pain, searching, and both triumph and despair, told without agenda."
2011,
A. Revathi,
English,
India,
Original title: "Les hijras: Portrait socioreligieux d'une communauté transgenre sud-asiatique" (Hijras: Socio-religious portrait of a South Asian transgender community) by Mathieu Boisvert.
Hijras, often referred to as "transgender" by Westerners, are a distinct community whose identity underpinnings transcend sexual orientation alone. This "third gender" is presented with great finesse in this book, which examines, among other things, family structures, perceptions of aging, human rights issues, and rituals of all kinds – from birth to death to community integration, marriage, or castration.
Based on field studies and interviews, the book describes a complex and astonishing world of people who live on the margins of society while struggling for the legitimacy of a status that would allow them to be fully part of it. Three stories in particular bear witness to the daily practices of the hijras and their philosophy and thus provide this study with valuable insight of direct experience.
2018,
French,
India,
Mathieu Boisvert,
Original title: "Hijura: Indo dai san no sei" ヒジュラ インド第三の性 (Hijra: The Third Sex in India) by Takeshi Isikawa 石川武志.
"Neither a woman nor a man, holy and profane, one who serves God, who bathes in stones, who weeps in spring - the hijra. It has been 17 years since I was following their lives with a camera in hand. In the midst of numerous photographs and plain texts, the third sex living in India, the land of chaos, forms a real picture."
Born in 1950, Takeshi Isikawa is a photographer. After graduating from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1972, he studied with Eugene Smith and traveled to the United States.. He became a freelancer in 1975 and has since covered the Silk Road, India, Thailand, the Philippines, China, and other Asian countries, as well as South America.
1995,
India,
Japanese,
Takesi Isikawa,
Original title: "Bishaṇṇa br̥hannalā" by Nīhāra Majūmadāra.
The book includes some articles on transgender people with special reference to West Bengal, India.
2019,
Bengali,
India,
Nīhāra Majūmadāra,
Original title: "Veḷḷai moḻi" வெள்ளை மொழி (White language) by A. Revathi.
"This is the autobiography of an Aravani who struggles to live as a woman. From the moment she realizes herself as a woman, her struggle begins. The book openly talks about different types of experiences such as finding people who are similar to her and following their traditions, living in the sex industry imposed on Aravanis, from the family that excludes and hates them due to lack of understanding to the inhumane police, and the ways of working together with people who understand about gender minorities.
This book contains the power to create vibrations in the hardened public mind and break the conventions of writing and give newness to the Tamil script."
2011,
A. Revathi,
India,
Tamil,
Full title: "Transgenders in India: An Introduction" by Veerendra Mishra.
"This introductory volume studies the challenges faced by the transgender community in India. It traces the history of the representation of the community in Hindu texts to understand the evolution of their status within Indian society. The book looks at various themes such as the concept of establishing identity through the processes of 'coming out' and 'transitioning’ and analyses how race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, nation, religion, and ability have cross-influenced to shape the transgender experience and trans culture across and beyond the binary.
Lucid and topical, the book debunks myths and critiques the stigma and discrimination surrounding the transgender community. It will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of gender studies, queer studies, exclusion and discrimination studies, political science, sociology, social anthropology, and South Asian studies."
2023,
English,
India,
Veerendra Mishra,
Full title: "With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India" by Gayatri Reddy.
"With Respect to Sex is an intimate ethnography that offers a provocative account of sexual and social differences in India. The subjects of this study are hijras or the “third sex” of India - individuals who occupy a unique, liminal space between male and female, sacred and profane.
Hijras are men who sacrifice their genitalia to a goddess in return for the power to confer fertility on newlyweds and newborn children, a ritual role they are respected for, at the same time as they are stigmatized for their ambiguous sexuality. By focusing on the hijra community, Gayatri Reddy sheds new light on Indian society and the intricate negotiations of identity across various domains of everyday life."
2005,
English,
Gayatri Reddy,
India,
Full title: "Hijras: Who We Are" by Meena Balaji as told to Ruth Lor Malloy.
"This is a booklet about the unique hijra (aka eunuch) cult in India. They are a secretive people. They worship a Mother Goddess who demands infertility of her followers. In return disciples believe she gives them the power to bless and curse. They are severely discriminated against. Many become beggars and prostitutes to survive.
In 1997 Canadian Ruth Lor Malloy and a group of multifaith volunteers in Mumbai put this booklet together for the hijras to sell when they were begging. It made headlines world wide. It is an interview with a hijra guru about her society, customs, religion, ritual castration and much more."
2023,
English,
India,
Meena Balaji,
Ruth Lor Malloy,
Full title: "Becoming Farah: A Life in Bombay, 1943 to 1986" by Farah Rustom.
"Farah’s cutting-edge gender reassignment surgery in 1976 created a sensation, as she was already well known as a pioneering lecturer on Western Classical Music Appreciation and a freelance journalist.
This is her astonishing, frank and unique story, honestly and movingly describing her many passions, experiences and travels around India.
A moving portrayal of life in Bombay until the Eighties, belonging to a very special and distinct community little known outside of India, namely the Parsis, originally from Persia. It is a portrait of a wonderful and very special city in a joyfully creative and fascinating era, now sadly gone forever, although as every person who grew up in Bombay will attest, once the city becomes a part of you, it is there forever."
2023,
English,
Farah Rustom,
India,
Full title: "Kuri Aruththen/குறி அறுத்தேன்" (I cut the mark) by Kalki Subramaniam/கல்கி சுப்ரமணியம்.
Each word of Kalki Subramaniam's poetry comes from her heart like an arrow from a bow, it shoots rage against gender injustice, the poems are powerful, sarcastic, and challenging, and show the pride in the writer in her identity as a transgender woman.
From transgender people's lives to climate issues, her Tamil poems are deep, and heart-touching and would leave an impact on the reader for many days after reading the book. I interviewed Kalki in 2014 and asked her what she thinks about the present situation of transgender women in the Indian society in general: "It is sure changing for better in some states like Tamilnadu and Karnataka. However, many states of India still are not safe places for transgender people to live, for example, Kerala.
2022,
India,
Interview,
Kalki Subramaniam,
Tamil,
Original title: "Mallikavasantham" by Vijayaraja Mallika.
Vijayaraja Mallika's Mallikavasantham is an extraordinary reading experience when a transgender life takes shape as an autobiography. She was Manu J till the age of thirty.
This book is a revelation of a human condition that lives as Krishna and later as Vijayaraja Malika. Vijayaraja Malika writes without any concealment. Transgender life is a conflict between the emotional experiences of a woman and a man. This is also the story of girls who have survived these hard experiences and second views of society. Vijayaraja Malika is a social activist and poet.
2020,
India,
Malayalam,
Vijayaraja Mallika,
Full title: "We Are Not The Others: Reflections of a Transgender Artivist" by Kalki Subramaniam.
"‘We Are Not The Others’ is a strikingly moving book that touches the heart of its readers, and takes them on a furious and empathetic journey into the personal lives of transgender people of India. It is a one-of-a-kind book from India’s renowned transgender rights activist Kalki Subramaniam who blatantly and honestly speaks about the joys, hopes, struggles, and despair of a transgender person, the author herself, and ferociously upholds her dignity and that of others like her."
I interviewed Kalki in 2014 and asked her what she thinks about the present situation of transgender women in the Indian society in general: "It is sure changing for better in some states like Tamilnadu and Karnataka. However, many states of India still are not safe places for transgender people to live, for example, Kerala. The state has 100% literacy but has 0% tolerance when it comes to accepting transgender people and allowing them to live a dignified life. India still has a long way to go in recognizing transgender people’s rights. I believe it will happen for sure in the coming years."
2021,
English,
India,
Kalki Subramaniam,
Full title: "The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story" by A. Revathi.
"Revathi was born a boy, but felt and behaved like a girl. In telling her life story, Revathi evokes marvellously the deep unease of being in the wrong body that plagued her from childhood.
To be true to herself, to escape the constant violence visited upon her by her family and community, the village-born Revathi ran away to Delhi to join a house of hijras. Her life became an incredible series of dangerous physical and emotional journeys to become a woman and to find love.
The Truth about Me is the unflinchingly courageous and moving autobiography of a hijra who fought ridicule, persecution and violence both within her home and outside to find a life of dignity."
2010,
A. Revathi,
English,
India,
Full title: "I am Vidya: A Transgender's Journey"
"Identities are not mere markers we are known by, they define as well as limit us. They can both confine or release a consciousness. I Am Vidya is the story of one such journey that of a declaration, of the claiming of an identity. It is an assertion of a consciousness that has suffered the agony of being trapped in a mould it does not belong to, a body it does not identify with.
Vidya has lived through all the indignities forced upon a tirunangai, a transgender, by a society that divides and defines itself as men and women in terms of biology alone from being spurned by her family, to begging on the streets as a social outcast, from donning a woman's clothes, to undergoing excruciating surgery to lose her 'manhood', from suffering emotional and physical harassment, to arriving at her true identity. A compelling narrative about a woman trapped within a man's body, this is a story of extraordinary courage and perseverance."
2008,
English,
India,
Living Smile Vidya,
Full title: "A Life in Trans Activism" by A. Revathi.
"When Revathi’s powerful memoir, The Truth About Me, first appeared in 2011, it caused a sensation. Readers learned of Revathi’s childhood unease with her male body, her escape from her birth family to a house of hijras (the South Asian generic term for transgender people), and her eventual transition to being the woman she always knew she was.
This new book charts her remarkable journey from relative obscurity to becoming India’s leading spokesperson for transgender rights and an inspiration to thousands.
Revathi describes her life, her work in the NGO Sangama, which works with people across a spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations, and how she rose from office assistant to director in the organization. Today she is an independent activist, theatre person, actor and writer, and works for the rights of transgender persons."
2016,
A. Revathi,
English,
India,
Nandini Murali,
This is the English language edition of "Mi Hijada Mi Laxmi" by Laxmi Narayan Tripathi.
"Battling such emotional turmoil from a very young age, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, born in a high-caste Brahman household, felt confused, trapped, and lonely. Slowly, he began wearing women's clothes. Over time, he became bold and assertive about his real sexual identity. Finally, he found his true
self-she was Laxmi, a hijra (a term used in South Asia for transgender individuals).
From numerous love affairs to finding solace by dancing in Mumbai's bars; from being taunted as a homo to being the first Indian hijra to attend the World AIDS Conference in Toronto; from mental and physical abuse to finding a life of grace, dignity, and fame, this autobiography is an extraordinary journey of a hijra who fought against tremendous odds for the recognition of hijras and their rights."
2015,
English,
India,
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi,
