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: "Und dennoch Ja zum Leben: Die Jugend eines Intersexuellen in den Jahren 1915–1933" (And Yet Yes to Life: The Youth of an Intersexual in the Years 1915–1933) by Erich Amborn.
"This text captivates the reader in an impressive way. The sober and restrained depiction of the consequences of such an otherness alone is hardly conceivable for the "normal person" and touches the reader intensively and lastingly.
This segregation from human society is an existential omen that is difficult to bear and to overcome. In this text, one is confronted with a fate that illuminates the human condition from an unknown and hidden side.
For those who want to listen, this is an instructive and continuing example of what life can mean. Understanding, insights, and tolerance undoubtedly make reading a win.
The human being, whose decisive years of development are described in this text, was born without a clear gender determination. In accordance with his physical and psychic disposition, nature has placed him between the definable poles of man and woman, just as if this nature wanted to say: "Here you have your strangeness of your body and your psyche, see how you can cope with it and how you can come to a life worthy of man. In any case, you are an outsider of 'normal' society.""
1981,
Erich Amborn,
German,
Intersex,
Full title: "Born Both: An Intersex Life" by Hida Viloria.
"My name is Hida Viloria. I was raised as a girl but discovered at a young age that my body looked different. Having endured an often turbulent home life as a kid, there were many times when I felt scared and alone, especially given my attraction to girls. But unlike most people in the first world who are born intersex - meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female - I grew up in the body I was born with because my parents did not have my sex characteristics surgically altered at birth.
It wasn't until I was twenty-six and encountered the term intersex in a San Francisco newspaper that I finally had a name for my difference. That's when I began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders - to be both and neither. I tried living as a feminine woman, an androgynous person, and even for a brief period of time as a man. Good friends would not recognize me, and gay men would hit on me. My gender fluidity was exciting, and in many ways freeing - but it could also be isolating."
2017,
English,
Hida Viloria,
Intersex,
Full title: "Alyce Unchained" by Alyce May Anders.
"Alyce Unchained is part fiction and part memoir dealing with Gender Identity and the difficulties of growing up Intersex. It consists of a novella, a short memoir focusing on her childhood, a collection of short stories, as well as several essays on the subject. The fictional stories are character driven, most of which are based on Alyce's life experiences."
"About the Author: Alyce Anders studied creative writing and photojournalism at the City University of New York, and currently writes about issues that affect the Transgender and Intersex communities."
2017,
Alyce May Anders,
English,
Intersex,
Original title: "Cómo ser trans y morir asesinada en el intento" (How to be trans and die murdered in the attempt) by Frida Cartas.
For Frida Cartas, transsexuality, or being a trans woman, does not mean a "transition", or a "change" from A to B, a "person who stopped being X to become Y"... Nor any of these stories that are generally society (through discourses of inclusion) who adjudicate them via sociocultural patterns and standards, and that are repeated even by the same people, trans women and men.
For Frida Cartas, being a trans woman is an expropriation of her own body, previously stolen precisely by these patterns and standards. For Frida Cartas to be a trans woman is to have done justice to herself, within a world in which it seems that no woman has justice. If, as Marx pointed out, we must take the means of production, Frida took the first and most hers: her body and all the sexuality that inhabits it, then she not only began to build and produce, but also to do politics. A work that has earned her the derision and the simplistic and light criticism of those who do not support collectivity and self-management.
2022,
Frida Cartas,
Intersex,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Full title: "Two Different Worlds I've Lived In: The True Story of Being Intersex" by Wilma Swartz.
"Wilma's mother was believed to be pregnant with twins due to fertility drugs taken by her. However, it was found that when the babies were born they were merged into one child. This child was male externally and female internally. The mother cleverly hid this fact from everyone including Wilma for 30 years.
Born and raised as male, Bill's life was a living hell of confusion, hate, deception and betrayal. Due to the medicine that Bill had to take to suppress the female hormones from sending his body into menstruation and embarrassingly leaking breast milk, he was given an alternative: die or allow his female hormones to take over. This is the story of Wilma and Bill's struggle to live and die."
2015,
English,
Intersex,
Wilma Swartz,
