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: "La bambina invisibile. Diario di una transizione" (The invisible child. Diary of a transition) by Alessia Nobile.
Alessia is a transgender woman, but this definition is only a social stigma that distorts and hides a world of emotions hidden in the most ancestral dualism, that between body and soul. Alessia talks about this split and its consequences. From her childhood in which the awareness emerges that her childhood envelope is only an optical illusion, because her soul is female, to her adolescence struggling between loneliness and the desire to reproduce some form of normality, from the methodical and reflective construction of an identity that does not allow conformist betrayals to the transition and crumbling family and social relationships, as it closes every job opportunity. Alessia must refound her life every day and on her way she will meet the diaphanous loneliness of fragile girls and the empathic warmth of Don Gallo, the tenderness of the childish gesture of an ordinary man and the wickedness generated by ignorance.
2022,
Alessia Nobile,
Italian,
Full title: "Roma erotica" (Erotic Rome) by Giò Stajano.
Giò Stajano, the most famous transgender woman in the history of Italy, shares her erotic encounters in the city of Rome at a time when she is still not certain about her true identity. She starts as a homosexual man, gradually discovering her feminine side.
According to Wikipedia, Countess Maria Gioacchina Stajano Starace Briganti di Panico, known simply as Giò Stajano (1931-2011), was an Italian nobleman, writer, journalist, actress, and transgender painter. In the 60s, before her mtf transition in 1983, she was the center of public attention as one of the first homosexual men publicly declared in Italy. She is remembered for a night swim in the Fontana della Barcaccia. She was said to have been inspired by Federico Fellini's scene of Anita Ekberg's bath in the Trevi Fountain in La dolce vita (1960).
1967,
Georges Burou,
Giò Stajano,
Italian,
Original title: "Trilogia esplicita: Romanzo esplicito - P. La mia adolescenza trans - Anestesia" (Explicit trilogy: Explicit novel - P. My trans adolescence - Anesthesia) by Fumettibrutti.
With her unparalleled bare, primary, essential sign, an author who in a few years has established herself among the most important voices of Italian comics transports us on a complex, painful but overflowing with life path. An autobiography in three stages, which make their way on the page following the order dictated by the urgency of the story.
Here then is "Romanzo esplicito", the dazzling first work of Fumettibrutti, the story of an important love, followed in all its painful evolution through glimpses of real life, in which sex can lead to the apex of the union but also in the abyss of loneliness.
2023,
Fumettibrutti,
Italian,
Original title: "Non basta una parrucca: Storie di transessualismo dal maschile al femminile" (A wig is not enough: Stories of transsexualism from male to female) by Antonio Veneziani in co-operation with Ignazio Gori.
The book is a journey into the world of transgenderism, where seventy "trans" women tell their stories, chosen from about four hundred interviews collected in more than three years of work. Mature or underage, sex professionals and not.
This fascinating and contradictory world is probed through monologues, interviews, and advertisements, up to today's and cleared "fluid sex", a new sexual frontier. A book made of stories, humanity, and courage, accompanied by a collection of additional texts where scholars or artists who have dealt with the transgender world during their careers are called into question.
2021,
Antonio Veneziani,
Ignazio Gori,
Italian,
Original title: "Lei, Armando" (She, Armando) by Nicola Baroni and Dorothy Bhawl.
Late 60s. Carmine district of Brescia, a place of delinquency and ordinary prostitution, until three men with an all-female appearance arrive: they are Lea, Carlotta and Lora, the first transvestites from Brescia to take to the streets to beat. The authorities try in every way to stop them: arrest, fines, warnings, forced confinement; but they settle in "Dollhouse" and make it a brothel.
Slowly the place is filled with other waves of transvestites and transsexuals, not always welcome: the old levers see competition increase and the newcomers must win the right to beat under the house. Armando is one of them. Just nineteen years old she moved to this Eden of lust, where she experienced every excess on her skin, taking very few breaks: a few summer business trips, a brief (and unfair) parenthesis in jail and two years of marriage. Armando knew the most hidden desires of the thousands of men who climbed the rough stairs at number 5 of Vicolo Rossovera and for ten years she photographed life within those walls, the customers who frequented them, work colleagues, and friends of a lifetime. Now that few people remember the moans of pleasure that came from the house, it is time to recall them.
2017,
Dorothy Bhawl,
Italian,
Nicola Baroni,
Original title: "P. La mia adolescenza trans" (P. My trans adolescence) by Fumettibrutti.
After "Explicit Novel", Josephine Yole Signorelli raises the stakes, deciding to tell her own story with brutal honesty. And it is the story of a teenager discovering her gender identity, in the "zero years". The acceptance of one's body against the background of school, bullying, family and social life, highs, online dating, sex and "cupio dissolve". And finally awareness and transformation, love - first of all towards oneself.
This comic tells a very powerful and important story, and that Yole's story can make the average reader reflect on a lot of false beliefs that they may have about the trans reality.
2019,
Fumettibrutti,
Italian,
Josephine Yole Signorelli,
Original title: "Diurna. La transessualità come oggetto di discriminazione" (Diurna. Transsexuality as an object of discrimination) by Monica Romano.
Transsexuals live a condition of marginality in all social areas up to total exclusion in the family, in school, in work, in social relationships. Referring to the contemporary situation in Italy, this essay, written by those who have personally experienced this condition, analyzes the causes of the process and proposes solutions that can favor the emancipation and integration of these subjects.
The book uses scientific support in the psychiatric, genetic, and biological fields. It also reports a series of direct testimonies, from the present and the past (the classical era, the Renaissance, the American Indians, Nazi Germany), underlining how the phenomenon is not recent but historical. A phenomenon that has unfortunately been "discouraged" and hindered by.
2008,
Italian,
Monica Romano,
Original title: "Dove non siamo stati" (Where we haven't been) by Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto.
The transition, which in the verses of "Minimal Pain" is sexual, becomes here an indispensable existential datum to be able to move forward. A poem of ghosts and farewells, of abandoned houses, of realities kept only in the memory of those who remain, in the games left by children in the courtyards of childhood.
A sense of conclusion pervades her tight verses, the definitive one that always precedes change. An end that must be investigated in the most painful moments, before giving way to the new reality that knocks on the doors. A universal and authentic poetic result, in which personal experience is transfigured to welcome the experience of each one, questioning a void in which, on closer inspection, we have always been. With a preface by Roberta Dapunt and a critical note by Alberto Bertoni.
2020,
Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto,
Italian,
Original title: "Il mondo segreto delle Trav raccontato da una Trav" (The secret world of Travestie told by a Travestie) by Loredana.
"Do you know the difference between a crossdresser, a trans or a travestie? You will understand it by reading this book written by Loredana, a travestie who will guide you to discover this secret world. Because the Travestie world is one of the LGBT worlds (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans ...), which is less known as it is mostly lived as a second life, secretly, in the closet. Where very few know the names and addresses of the others. Where there is an ironclad, almost maniacal privacy.
Loredana tells about herself: her life, her experiences, her fears, her feelings, and her transgressions. And her story is intertwined with those of her "little sisters" (as they are called amicably among each other). This book is also a manual of the Travestie world: how to become one, how to get by, and what rules must be respected. Loredana is not afraid of the judgment that people will give: she is only interested in offering a clear photograph taken from the inside. And then in the stories she often presents without any veils and censorship."
Original title: "Nata due volte" (Born twice) by Maria Nadotti and Giovanna Rizzo.
Giovanni Rizzo, an esteemed lawyer of the Venetian bar, underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1993 that would give him for the rest of his days the sexual identity that, despite contradictions, he felt his since he was a child.
At forty-eight, with a marriage and three children behind her, the professional success achieved and the fame of Don Giovanni, Giovanna can finally become a woman. Through a progressive approach to the world of Giovanna, Maria Nadotti reconstructs the stages of this "necessary metamorphosis" and introduces "Anch'io", the disturbing text that Giovanna Rizzo writes immediately after the operation.
1995,
Giovanna Rizzo,
Italian,
Maria Nadotti,
"Le cattive" (The Bad Ones) is the Italian language edition of "Las malas" (The Bad Girls) published in Argentina in 2019 by Camila Sosa Villada.
From the Argentine author Camila Sosa Villada, a book of love and affection: when we finish the last page, we want the whole world to read it too! When she arrived in the city of Córdoba to study at the university, Argentine author Camila Sosa Villada decided to go to Parque Sarmiento during the night. She was scared to death, thinking that the brutal verdict she had heard from her father could come to fruition at any moment: "One day they will knock on this door to warn me that they found you dead, thrown into a ditch." For him, this was the only possible destination for a boy who dressed as a woman.
2021,
Argentina,
Camila Sosa Villada,
Italian,
"Questo libro è trans" (This book is trans) is the Italian language edition of "What's the T? The Guide to All Things Trans and/or Nonbinary" by Juno Dawson.
"In What’s the T? Stonewall ambassador and bestselling author Juno Dawson is back again, this time with everything you’ve wanted to know about labels and identities and offering uncensored advice on coming out, sex, and relationships with her trademark humor and lightness of touch. It is informative, helpful, optimistic, and funny but with a good dose of reality and some of the things that can downright suck too. The companion title to the groundbreaking This Book Is Gay, What's the T? tackles the complex realities of growing up trans with honesty and humor and is joyfully illustrated by gender non-conforming artist Soofiya."
2021,
Italian,
Juno Dawson,
Original title: "Diario di una trans (C'est la vie)" (Diary of a Trans (C'est la vie)) by Enrica Scielzo.
Enrico is a child born in Southern Italy into a large and happy family. From an early age, he feels that there is something special about him: he loves to look at Sailor Moon, fashion, make-up, and dreams of wearing a sparkling pink dress for his birthday. Soon he realizes that there is "a woman who aches in his body", and begins a difficult journey-interior and exterior-that will lead him to become a beautiful woman.
Diary of a Trans is the manifesto of a new generation, which looks to the future without ever forgetting its roots. During this introspective journey, Enrica talks about herself, giving very intense and moving pages about her childhood and her loves, but not sparing some criticisms of the society we live in today - apparently very open and liberal but, in fact, still full of prejudices. The biography is full of light, which wants to give hope to those who feel alone and wrong, and to those who still haven't found their way.
2021,
Enrica Scielzo,
Italian,
Original title: "La Crisalide e le Lantane. Diario di un uomo cisgender" (The Chrysalis and the Lantanas: Diary of a cisgender man) by Avarino Caracò.
The book is an intimate journey of a cisgender photographer, motivated to know some individual and daily aspects of eleven people, five transgender MtF, five transgender FtM, and one non-binary, united only by the Sicilian territory in which they live, but profoundly different from each other.
In research that has no didactic purpose and even less of synthesis, Avarino Caracò tells the details of his meeting with these people without hiding the difficulties and the deep emotions that are triggered within the relationships that are created. Against every stereotype, against every morbidly sexualized vision of gender identity, the visual path of this book underlines the elements of everyday life, accompanying us towards a profound reflection on "normality" and existence. The book closes with an afterword by Cirus Rinaldi, associate professor of sociology at the Department of Cultures and Society of the University of Palermo, with a profound reflection on the concept of transition.
2021,
Avarino Caracò,
Italian,
Original title: "L'aurora delle trans cattive. Storie, sguardi e vissuti della mia generazione transgender" (The dawn of bad trans women. Stories, looks and experiences of my transgender generation) by Porpora Marcasciano.
Spanning a period of about forty years and its profound socio-political changes, Porpora traces her trans genealogy by adding essential pieces to the historical reconstruction of a culture often relegated to the margins. And she does so as the protagonist of the collective path, still devoid of shared reading, of those who have consciously placed themselves in the border space between genres. With "visual" writing able to render in images what she has seen and experienced, Porpora accompanies us in a world populated by legendary trans women who have given life, form, scene, and screenplay to an experience in many ways closer to the spectacular or performative dimension than to that of real life, from which they were absolutely excluded.
2018,
Italian,
Porpora Marcasciano,
Original title: "Io volevo andare nella foresta. Storie di vita per una sociologia dell'esperienza trans" (I wanted to go to the forest. Life stories for a sociology of trans experience) by Celeste Papuli.
The aim of the book is to turn to those who, through their body, experience the trans condition. For a long time the "expert knowledge" has monopolized the discourses on the subject and also for this reason, through the collection of life stories of trans subjectivity, the book proposes a sociological reflection on the meaning that experience assumes directly for those who tell themselves.
2019,
Celeste Papuli,
Italian,
"Nella camera oscura" (In The Dark Room) is the Italian language edition of Susan Faludi and Patricia Piolon's bestseller "In the Darkroom".
Let me quote the 2016 article from The New York Times: ""In the Darkroom" is Faludi's rich, arresting and ultimately generous investigation of her father, who died in 2015. It is partly an inquiry into the meaning of gender, a subject Faludi, the famous feminist, sees very differently from Stefánie, who hewed to traditional notions of masculinity and femininity both as an overbearing patriarch and as a coquettish old woman."
"But in trying to understand her inscrutable father — Jewish Holocaust survivor and Leni Riefenstahl fanatic, man and woman, a sly fantasist whose tallest tales turn out to be true — Faludi transcends feminist debate. The book, which traces the decimation of her father's prosperous, assimilated Jewish clan during World War II, his improbable survival and then reinvention in Denmark, Brazil, and America, and his gender metamorphosis at 76, becomes a complex act of forgiveness."
2019,
Italian,
Stefánie Faludi,
Susan Faludi,
"Io principessa. Storia di Luana, una bambina transgender" (I princess. Story of Luana, a transgender child) is the Italian language edition of "Yo nena, yo princesa: Luana, la niña que eligió su propio nombre" (Me baby, me princess: Luana, the girl who chose her own name) by Gabriela Mansilla.
On May 9, 2012, the Argentine National Congress passed a law on gender identity recognizing the right to identity of transvestites, transsexuals, and transgenders, indicating their female sex. A political-social revolution that has been intertwined with that of Manuel, the Argentine child, who became by law, at the age of six, the youngest transgender in the world with the name of Luana.
This is her story, told in an intimate personal diary, by her mother Gabriela Mansila.
2018,
Argentina,
Gabriela Mansilla,
Italian,
Original title: "Dolore minimo" (Minimal pain) by Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto.
The "minimal pain" of the title expresses the complex transsexual condition pronounced with great poetic power, aimed at breaking the wall of silent cultural taboo. The young author tells her luminous rebirth with verses, delicate and very deep at the same time, which made Dacia Maraini and Alessandro Fo talk about a literary phenomenon.
"Minimal pain" is not the manifesto of those who have experienced, growing up, "a rebellious detachment from the flesh, / a fratricidal struggle between spirit / and skin." It is the viaticum of anyone who wants to savor a powerful poem that delicately offers the reader a paradigm to orient himself in the infinite, wonderful confusion of existence.
2018,
Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto,
Italian,
Original title: "AntoloGaia. Vivere sognando e non sognare di vivere: i miei anni Settanta" (AntoloGaia. Living dreaming and not dreaming of living: my seventies) by Porpora Marcasciano.
In 2016, Porpora Marcasciano published the second edition of the book with a slightly different name: "AntoloGaia. Sesso, genere e cultura degli anni '70" (AntoloGaia. Sex, gender and culture of the 70s).
Porpora Marcasciano starts with herself and, through her biography, tells us about the seventies from a special point of observation. Hers is a deviant and scandalous experience, a "continuous crush", made up of manifestations, passions, fears, dreams, and sexuality, in which she crosses many small and large characters, builds the first LGBT communities, the first "pride" and the nascent gay movement, which enters into a relationship with the revolutionary movement of those years pushing it to become aware of itself and its body. A reality in which trans, gays, lesbians, and women revolutionize not only their lives but consequently the whole world.
2015,
Italian,
Porpora Marcasciano,
